by Gee, Maurice
Mum turned. She caught me at the moment when I’d put the bag down to change hands. ‘Come on, Rex.’
Jackson Coop made a step towards me, as if to help, but she restrained him. ‘He can do it.’ So they went on and I gave the bag a short hard kick before picking it up. ‘Nigger bag.’
We walked through town. People watched as we went by. One lady ran down her path and leaned over her gate for a better view. Most of us in Kettle Creek had only seen Negroes in the pictures – porters on trains, bellboys and cooks (fat ladies who were always laughing), or trumpet players in the dance band. Jackson Coop was rare – unique – like, say, one of those African animals brought to ancient Rome, an ostrich or hyena or giraffe. I don’t mean we wanted to put him in an arena and make him fight, though later on it came close to that. But some of us would have liked to have him on show and walk around and prod and poke him. Not me, of course. To me he wasn’t a wonder, he was a shame.
They crossed the road. I stayed on the side where I was. It took me along the footpath by the Whalley house and there were Marv and Herb on the porch, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer with old man Whalley.
Marv stood up. ‘Will you look at that?’ I saw his pudgy face go lolly-pink. He did not mean me, trudging by with a black man’s bag, but Jackson Coop walking in the street with two white women and Mum’s hand tucked inside his arm.
‘Now I seen everything.’
‘Aw, Marv…’ I did not hear how Herb restrained him, but kept on my way, falling behind; and went up Barrington Road, saw Mum and Gloria and Jackson Coop turn in at our gate and Jackson shoot a glance at the hearse. When I came into the kitchen Dad was pumping Jackson’s hand.
‘My wife didn’t say you were a darkie. Say, I’ll bet you could do with a beer.’
‘He hasn’t had his tea yet, Alf. You must be starving, Mr Coop.’
‘Jackson, ma’am. Call me Jack.’
‘Jack. Yes, Jack.’ She seemed delighted, as though by a name entirely new. ‘Jack is lovely. Now what do you like to eat?’
‘Whatever you’ve got, that’s fine with me.’
‘Snarlers,’ Dad said.
‘We’ve got sausages and mashed potatoes and oodles of vegetables.’ Then she saw me standing in the door with the bag. ‘Put that on Jack’s bed.’
I went through the room, looking at no one, and into my bedroom, where I hoisted the bag on to the bed. Half an hour before that bed had seemed magical because Buddy Storm was going to sleep in it. Now I wanted to jam it into the corner to get it further away from mine. I thought, with a kind of horror, and some fear too, that I was going to share my room with a Negro. I couldn’t believe Mum had done this to me.
‘Private Monkeyface,’ I said.
I leaned across the bag and ripped my sketch from the wall – the Yank and Jap – and crumpled it up and threw it on top of the wardrobe. Then I picked at the corner of the flag with my fingernail and pulled it off and worked it into a tiny ball.
When I went back to the kitchen Jack was sitting at the table eating a big plate of sausages and mashed potatoes and vegetables. He held his fork the American way – but nothing was going to please me. I sat on the settee, far away from him. Dad was at the table too, being companionable. He poured himself a glass of beer and when he’d put the bottle down picked up the sauce bottle and sloshed sauce on Jack’s sausages.
‘Have some more. There’s no shortages here.’
‘Alf,’ Mum protested, ‘he mightn’t like sauce.’
‘It’s all right, I do. Thank you, sir.’
‘Don’t call me sir. I s’pose they make you darkies do that, eh? Call me Alf. The demon barber of Kettle Creek.’ He grinned evilly and hammed stropping a razor. Dad had been thrown a bit out of his stride by Jack and was working hard to recover. ‘Say, Jack, you wouldn’t be in the quartermaster’s department?’
‘Sir?’
‘Stores. Supplies.’
‘Now don’t start that,’ Mum said.
‘No, sir. Infantry.’
‘Footsloggers, eh.’ Dad was disappointed.
‘And no war talk,’ Mum said. ‘He’s come to get away from that. What part of America do you come from, Jack?’
He swallowed a lump of sausage so he wouldn’t keep her waiting. I saw it travel in his throat and saw how it hurt going down. ‘Chicago, ma’am.’
‘You ever see guys running round with choppers?’ Dad made a rat-tat sound and sprayed the room with bullets. Usually I found him entertaining but he didn’t entertain me that night. Jack managed to laugh.
‘Let him eat, Alf,’ Mum said. She offered him more coffee – from a bottle of essence; we hadn’t learned yet how it horrified Americans.
‘No, no, what I’ve got is fine.’
Gloria came in, dolled up for the pictures. She asked Dad for two and six and he fished automatically in his pocket.
‘You’re not going to the pictures on Jack’s first night?’ Mum said.
‘It’s all arranged, Mum. I’m meeting Faye.’ And Matty too, but she didn’t say that.
Jack half rose from his chair. ‘I’ve got some nylons for you ladies.’
Mum pushed him down. ‘You finish eating. Nylons can wait.’
‘Real ones?’ Gloria said, with that shining-eyed look girls put on for Yanks – for what they handed out, more than what they were. I’d seen it before, but was disgusted to see Gloria doing it with Jack.
‘The real thing,’ he said, and he gave a smile, a white flash of teeth in his black face.
‘I can get you top money for nylons,’ Dad said.
‘Alf!’
‘I can wear them tonight,’ Gloria said.
‘No you can’t. Tomorrow is plenty of time. The first thing Jack is doing is eating his tea. Where are you going?’ That was to me, easing out of the room. I didn’t want to stay there any longer.
‘Homework,’ I muttered. My glance slid over Jack. I met his eye a second and realised he knew my lie. Then he forked up mashed potato and put it in his mouth and ate again.
I went to the bedroom, and didn’t do homework of course, but took my BB gun and let myself out the front door. Round on the back lawn, in the dusk, I aimed and shot, aimed and shot, at the Hitler/Tojo box, until I lost sight of the faces in the dark. I lost half a dozen BBs that night but didn’t care. I knelt only five feet away and blasted holes in the enemy.
Gloria went to the pictures – wearing those nylons after all, she’d got round Mum – and sat with Matty, and got the eye from Marv, she claimed next day. Faye introduced her, and Faye told her too that Marv and Herb reckoned that at home they chased niggers in their cars for fun. ‘They call them nigras,’ Faye said. ‘The nigras can run.’
‘They wouldn’t chase Jack,’ Gloria said.
I went to bed and read my Champion – Rockfist knocking out Huns with uppercuts and Bill Ross blowing up ammunition dumps. I got right away from Jackson Coop. Jackson Coop didn’t exist. But in the end Mum opened the door and brought him in. His bag on the bed was open (for those nylons) but I hadn’t poked in it, as I might have done with Buddy Storm, but kept away, didn’t even look. And I did no more than glance up when Mum brought him in.
‘I’m sorry it’s so small.’
‘It ain’t small to me, ma’am. Where I grew up on the South Side we all slept in one room.’ He smiled at Mum, a bit self-conscious. ‘Eight kids in three beds.’
So he came from a slum, the colonel was right.
‘How awful,’ Mum said.
I couldn’t resist it. ‘That’s two and two-thirds a bed.’ The sort of smart remark I specialised in.
Jack was startled – surprised perhaps to find I had a voice. He laughed uneasily and took his toothbrush from the bag and went out with his towel. Mum was looking angrily at me.
‘Don’t you get smart with him. He’s just a boy and he’s a long way from home.’
‘Why’d you have to get someone like him?’
‘Because I thought no one else would.
And he’s very nice. While he’s here he’s part of our family. Just you remember.’
‘He’s not coming to school.’
‘Oh yes he is. You’re not wriggling out.’
‘Mu-um –’
‘I’ve already told him.’
Out she went and I lay there with the bottom dropped out of my world. That’s a tired old metaphor. Let’s see if I can find a better one. Down in Fiordland you see huge scars of rock shining in the bush on the mountainsides. The trees can’t put down roots. They hold each other in place until one loses its grip and then they all go, acres of them, down into the waters of the fiord. This is called a tree avalanche. I felt as if something of that sort had happened to me. Something I’d thought surely rooted had slid away and a glistening scar was in its place.
I turned the light out, lay in the dark, and heard Jack feeling his way when he came back. I heard him taking his clothes off and folding them on the chair at the foot of his bed. Then he pulled the curtains open. (We had blackouts at that time so they couldn’t be open when the lights were on.) He had stripped down to a pair of underpants and his skin glistened in the light from the moon. I watched him through half-closed eyes, thinking how easily he could kill me. He got into bed, propped the pillow up on the headboard, and lit a cigarette. His face in the light from the match had, it seemed to me, smoother shining patches than a white face would have. It went back in the shadows but when he drew on his cigarette it came out again, coloured red. I was frightened. I wondered if Dad would hear me if I yelled.
He wouldn’t have. Dad was off on his own affairs – down in the garage with George Perry, handing over cash for a bundle of bicycle inner tubes. He told us in the morning that Bob Davies had ridden by on his bike and shone his torch in and he and George had had to squat in the gap between the bonnet and the end wall until he was gone.
‘Old George, he lost half a gallon of sweat.’
They got their deal done and George crept off while Dad leaned on the mudguard and rolled a cigarette. He heard a girl laugh far off in the night, so he didn’t light up but stood there waiting. In a moment Gloria and Matty arrived at the gate. They talked for a while, then Matty kissed her. Dad let them have one kiss. In the middle of the second he put his cigarette behind his ear and put his two forefingers in his mouth and blew an ear-splitting whistle.
It came into my bedroom like a scream.
‘Jeez!’ Jack said. He dropped his cigarette and curled himself down in the bed, half on his side. His hands went up and covered his head.
Dad’s voice yelled, ‘Inside, Gloria. On your way, young Yukich.’
I got out of bed and picked up Jack’s cigarette from the blanket. ‘You don’t have to be scared, it’s only Dad.’
He had his head covered the way a chimpanzee covers its head, with palms cupped on top and elbows in front as a shield. His eyes in that cave slowly came open and he listened to Gloria’s feet scrunch up the path.
‘He says she’s too young to go out with boys.’
Jack took his arms down. He reached for his cigarette and drew on it deeply, then pulled himself up against the pillow. He let out smoke.
‘How old is she?’
‘Sixteen.’
He looked as if he found that hard to believe. ‘My sisters were in the cannery when they were sixteen. Bessie had a baby of her own.’
I didn’t like the idea that Gloria was old enough for babies. ‘She’s going to be a schoolteacher,’ I said.
He sat up more. The moonlight struck a scar on his shoulder and made it shine. ‘Teaching’s a good job.’
I looked at the scar, wondering if a bayonet had made it.
‘Did you think it was the Japs when Dad whistled?’
Jack drew on his cigarette. His face shone red and went back again into the shadows. ‘Japs didn’ whistle.’
‘No, I meant…’ I made the whistling sound of a shell and drew a trajectory with my hand.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Have you got a Purple Heart?’
Jack reached down and pulled his bag from under the bed. He slid his hand in and felt around and came up with the medal. He dangled it on its ribbon and gave it to me. I looked at it by the window, in the moonlight, and found it really was a heart, and purple too, with a gold border and a gold man in profile set on it.
‘Who’s that?’
‘George Washington.’
I wasn’t going to show I was impressed. ‘Our soldiers don’t get medals for just being wounded.’
‘That right?’
I gave him the Purple Heart and he put it in his bag and pushed it under the bed.
‘If you have another cigarette,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to close the curtains before you strike the match.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘There were Jap subs up north a while ago.’
‘Okay.’
I could see I wasn’t impressing him. I got into bed, ‘We were in the war before you.’
‘Sure, kid.’
His face lit up, his jungle face, as he inhaled. He squashed the butt in the ashtray on the floor. He wasn’t going to light up again.
I drew my blankets round me and lay there watching his scar.
Chapter 5
Mammy
Getting Mum alone next morning was impossible, so I went to school knowing Jack would come to our class. I thought of hiding in the slit trenches after lunch but I was a law-abiding boy and didn’t have the nerve.
The afternoon started with composition, which brought out Miss Betts’s bossiness. She thought no one but her knew the English language, and she went round with her ruler in her hand pointing out wrong grammar and punctuation and chopping you on the knuckles for a really bad mistake. Starting a sentence with ‘and’ was a bad mistake, or ending one with a preposition. Slang was the worst mistake of all.
Chop went her ruler on Leo’s hand.
‘ “Loony” is not a word. Nor is “gosh”.’
‘People say “gosh”, Miss Betts.’
‘Not in my class. What’s this? “Having a rotten day.” How can a day be rotten, boy? A day can’t go bad. A day can’t smell.’
‘They seem like that.’
‘Are you answering back?’ She picked up his book to look at it and a sheet of paper fell out. Like me the day before, Leo had been drawing. But I couldn’t draw to save myself, my people and cars and aeroplanes had to be in profile. Leo, on the other hand, had a gift. He drew landscapes full of people doing things. He drew men digging holes and women sweeping floors. He drew faces that were smiling or frowning, you could see what was going on in people’s minds. On that day though, he’d done another sort. It looped away from the book and settled on the floor by my desk and I got a good look at it before Miss Betts snatched it up. It was a woman with no clothes on. She was facing away not towards, so there was nothing rude, just her behind. Which was fat. She had fat legs. Her long hair was fanned out down her back and her arms were lifted up to hug the sun, rising over hills, very close. You could tell, somehow, that her face was smiling. I knew who it was – not just because a pumpkin was sitting at her feet.
Miss Betts held it further from her eyes. ‘What’s this?’
‘A picture,’ Leo said.
‘I can see that. Who is it, boy?’ Did she wonder if it was her?
‘I made her up.’ (Liar!)
‘So that’s what you keep in that smutty head of yours.’
I don’t think she was cross. I think she was amused and hiding it. Miss Betts, I suspect, had a past, and I don’t believe a naked lady troubled her too much. She wasn’t going to miss the chance of beating Leo though.
‘Sit in your seats,’ she snapped at craning children. ‘Follow me, Yuck-ich.’ She went to her drawer. ‘I think you need a taste of Nurse Betts.’ Her strap unrolled like an ant-eater’s tongue and touched the floor.
Dawn Stewart sat two desks in front of me. I saw her hand go up. Miss Betts, holding Leo’s fingertips, getting
his hand just where she wanted it, did not see.
‘Miss Betts.’
‘What is it, girl?’
‘Can I leave the room?’
Someone tittered. Dawn had done this sort of thing before. She hated strapping.
‘Why didn’t you go at lunch time?’
‘I forgot.’
‘You would. Be quick.’
So Dawn got out – and Leo got the strap. And while we were watching, Jack must have crossed the playground and climbed the two wooden steps at the door. He found Dawn in the corridor, standing under the big picture of the King, with her head down and her hands clamped over her ears. He heard the strap and knew what it meant.
Dawn waited until she thought it was over, then looked round and saw Jack watching her. Her hands shot back as the strap cracked again.
Jack waited. He touched her shoulder. ‘All done.’
Dawn lowered her hands.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I got to find a room with some Miss Betts.’
‘She’s in there.’
‘That was a lady layin’ into someone?’ Those smacks had been so loud he’d thought they must be made by a man. ‘Who was gettin’ it?’
‘Leo Yukich.’
‘Not Rex, eh? You wanna take me?’
Dawn led him down the corridor, opened the door and stepped in. We were sitting shocked. The strap always sickens – coming down with a hiss and biting the soft skin of a hand – it turns your stomach over. Leo walked to his seat. He would not nurse his hand. Miss Betts wound up her strap, oh so neat. Suddenly, there was Dawn, making a little awkward movement backwards with her hand – and my stomach gave another turn.
Jack stepped in. He was wearing a tie with his uniform and carrying his cap in his hands – and he was so black! I hadn’t understood how black he was.