Daddy looked like he might be about to say something, then changed his mind. Jesslyn stopped her fork midway to her mouth. They got all quiet. Maybe what I said about the library worried them.
Just then Emma stepped into the dining room holding her red velvet cake, and Jesslyn looked up at the clock ticking away on the buffet. “May I be excused?” she asked. “I’m late for meeting Mary Louise at the library.” She pushed her chair back from the table. “Nice to have you for supper, Laura,” she said, and she smiled at my friend but not at me, of course.
When we’d finished our cake, Emma appeared at the table to brush crumbs off the linen tablecloth. “Thank you for the delicious dinner,” Laura said after she’d eaten every last bite of her cake. Maybe my new friend had found something to like here in Hanging Moss after all.
When Daddy headed back to the living room, I folded my napkin and stood up. “We’ll clear the plates,” I told Emma.
“You girls go on outside. Frankie will be here to play before you know it.” She stopped brushing crumbs and looked right at me. “You be careful of his brother, Glory. That boy has a bad mean streak about him.” Then the swinging door creaked shut, and the bright white of Emma’s uniform skirt disappeared into the kitchen.
After supper, Laura and me sat on the back steps listening to the crickets start up. You could about catch a lightning bug by holding your hand out. Before we knew it, we were slapping mosquitoes and I had to turn on the stoop light to see real good.
“My friend Frankie’s coming by to play. But I think he’s mad at me,” I said, as if Laura cared. I looked up at the porch light shining on the backyard. “I just hope he shows up before it gets too dark to play Kick the Can.”
Laura stared at me like I was talking Pig Latin. “Kick the Can?” She shook her head. “Do you ever play jacks with your friend?”
“Outside at night,” I told her, “we play Kick the Can or baseball.”
“I’m not allowed to play outside at night. I live in an apartment, in a city.” Laura smiled. “Once, my grandfather took me to an Indians game. Just me and Grandpa. Back in Ohio.”
I jumped off the step and showed Laura the spot where we’d worn down the grass for home plate. Then I pointed to the big pecan tree. “See that tree? That’s first base. And the water faucet, that high one sticking up out of the ground back there? That’s second.” I ran from the pecan tree to the faucet and stopped to catch my breath. “Third base is the steps where you’re sitting.” I raced to tag the steps and slid home just as Frankie and J.T. showed up.
“Hey, Glory. What’re you doing?” Frankie fiddled with the whistle hanging from the lanyard around his neck.
“I’m teaching my friend how we play baseball here in Hanging Moss.” I dusted the dirt off my shorts. “This is Frankie,” I said to Laura. “And that’s his brother, J.T.”
I pressed my lips hard so I wouldn’t introduce J.T. with what I really thought of him — Frankie’s fat, ugly brother.
J.T. looked at Laura’s brown sandals. He said, “You plan to run far in them clodhoppers?” J.T.’s about two times as tall as Frankie and ten times as mean.
“I could play in my socks.” Laura started unbuckling her sandals.
J.T. laughed a snorty sound out of his nose. “You’re wearing socks? In the summer? Black socks? What’s the matter with you, Yankee?”
“Mind your own business, J.T.” I untied my red sneakers. “I’m playing barefooted, Laura. That’s the easiest. How ’bout you, Frankie?”
J.T. jabbed his scary half finger at Frankie. “Remember what Daddy told you, little brother.”
Laura was barefooted by now, just like me. She’d dropped her shoes and those dumb black socks in a pile and stood up, ready to play.
“You wanna bat, Frankie?” I asked. But Frankie hadn’t budged. “What’s the matter? Just ’cause your brother doesn’t want to play, you’re leaving?” He stood there looking at J.T. like maybe his brother had something halfway sensible to say for once.
J.T. leaned down and kicked at something on the ground. He nodded at Frankie and glanced toward the step where me and Laura had lined up our shoes. Then he stuffed his hand in his pocket and started to walk away. “Let’s go.” He stopped and turned, waiting with his eyes set hard on his brother. “You comin’?”
Frankie looked at me, then Laura. “I can’t stay.” He moved closer. “My brother’ll tattle to Daddy that I was playing baseball with a Yankee,” he said to me. He rubbed his arm at the place where J.T. usually whacked him every time he opened his mouth. “Or worse.”
“Why’re you always doing everything he tells you?” I asked. “J.T. is not your daddy.” For the life of me, I don’t know why Frankie worships the ground his big brother walks on.
“My little brother ain’t supposed to play with no Yankees, here to cause trouble and mess up our town.” J.T. narrowed his eyes at Laura. “Wish you’d go back to where you came from.” Then he spit a gob in the dirt next to Laura’s bare feet. She jumped back, trying to get away from J.T.’s spit and his ugly words. “You need to get out of Hanging Moss, go where you’re wanted, if there is any such place,” he said, before strutting off toward his house.
“J.T. Smith, you stay away from me and my friend!” I hollered out, clenching my fists tight. “Stay away from my house and don’t ever come back!” I turned to Frankie. “Why does he have to act so ugly?”
Laura moved nearer to me, reaching out for my hand, like she hoped I could save her from J.T. and his spit. “What happened to his finger?” she whispered.
“Top of it got blown off by a firecracker, a cherry bomb, two Fourth of Julys ago,” I told her. “You’d think his brain got blown off. J.T. is dumb as a box of rocks.”
“I don’t like the way he talks.” Laura pulled me closer to the back door, farther from Frankie. “And his finger is scary.”
“Sometimes he tries to scare off little kids,” I said. “Tells them he has his bloody finger in his pants pocket.”
“Even with half a finger, my brother can do anything he wants to,” Frankie said. He was taking up for his brother now. Seemed to be forgetting the punches, all the yelling. “He’s the star of the football team, just like my daddy was,” he said, sticking his chest out.
“That’s about all your brother knows how to do,” I said. “Play football and act mean.”
“Frankie. You coming or not?” J.T. hollered from halfway down the block.
“I gotta go.” Frankie’s chest dropped. He kicked once at home base, then headed off down the street.
“Yeah, follow your stupid brother on home. We don’t want you playing with us anyhow,” I yelled after Frankie. “And I hope J.T.’s other finger gets blown off.”
I’d lost my hankering for baseball. Besides, it wasn’t any fun with just me and Laura. “Let’s just forget playing at night.”
Laura looked relieved.
We sat on the back steps for a few more minutes, watching fireflies light on our hands.
“It’s dark. We’d better go out front to wait for your mama.” I handed her sandals over and grabbed my sneakers.
“Let’s meet at the the park tomorrow. We can play jacks together. Or talk about Nancy Drew books,” Laura said. “Or the Beatles! I’ll be there early.”
Before the back door had hardly slammed behind us, already I was glad I wouldn’t be waiting for Frankie at Fireman’s Park to make our lanyards and candles and bead bracelets at ten o’clock sharp, like we’d been doing every Friday morning since summer began. Now, I had somebody new to be a friend to.
Frankie was back early the next afternoon. “Glory, open up. Please.” He kept up with his tap-tap-tapping on our kitchen screen door, quiet like, while I sat at the table reading more of The Secret in the Old Attic. I wasn’t ready to talk, much less tell Frankie I’d been at Fireman’s Park all morning with Laura.
But it was hard to ignore somebody who’d been your best friend all your life. And pretty soon he barged in the back
door.
His words came out all in a jumble. “I’m sorry about last night. Not staying to play with you and that girl. My brother’s just plain mean. Daddy gets him all riled up, talking about what might happen if somebody better than him makes the football team. Daddy’s mad about everything. Doesn’t want me talking to somebody from up North. Or somebody who’s nice to people from up there.”
I folded my arms. “What are you doing at my house?”
“Don’t know,” he said, slouching down in the chair next to me. “I wish it was last summer.”
Since he was here sitting at my kitchen table looking pitiful, and since I’d already read The Secret in the Old Attic twice before, I decided to be halfway nice. “Where’re you going?” I asked him.
“J.T. says Coach is making everybody work out in shoulder pads, get in shape for real football practices next month. I’m going over there to watch him sweat.”
“You may worship the ground your mean, ugly brother walks on, but I never want to lay eyes on him again as long as I live,” I told Frankie, and I meant it. “I’ll only go with you to watch Jesslyn make a fool out of herself at pep squad practice.”
We rode our bikes fast to the field. Frankie leaned into the chain-link fence, watching his brother like he was God’s gift to the Hanging Moss High School Hornets. I moved to where I could hear the pep squad leader with her megaphone calling out stuff like “Pivot left! About-face!” Jesslyn marched with her hands on her hips and her nose in the air and her long curly hair not moving an inch from the ton of hairspray she’d used this morning.
Watching football players sweat would be more fun. I headed back and ran into Jesslyn’s mystery boy from the library, holding the hose over his head. Stinking to high heaven.
“Hey, Jesslyn’s little sister.” He wiped his hands on his gold-and-black Hornets T-shirt and took a big drink. “I’m Robbie,” he said. “Robbie Fox.”
“How’d you know who I am?” I asked.
“Seen you around,” he said.
J.T. yelled out to Robbie, “You, pretty boy, ready to quit? Too hot for you, Elvis?”
Robbie turned his back to J.T. and started down the field. I hurried to keep up with him.
“Wait up. Why’d he call you Elvis?” I asked.
“Something stupid about my hair, I guess.”
“Are you new in town?” I was running along the fence, trying to keep up with Robbie Fox.
“Just moved here. Living with my aunt.”
“Who’s your aunt anyhow?” I called out. “Are you my sister’s boyfriend?”
“You ask too many questions. I gotta go.” When Robbie took off across the field, I moseyed back to sprawl out under a scrawny tree. The clouds drifted by and I turned the shapes into shells and ice-cream cones, thinking about this boy Robbie. Why was he here living with his aunt?
Pretty soon Frankie plopped down in the grass next to me. “Who’s that you were talking to?” he asked.
“Jesslyn’s friend, Robbie.”
“My brother says Robbie Fox thinks he’s hot snot. He brags all the time.” Frankie pulled up clumps of grass and tossed them at the fence. “About how many touchdowns he made at his other school.”
“J.T. and the rest of the stupid team oughta be happy. The Hornets stink at football,” I said. Frankie didn’t have an answer to that. He had plenty of book smarts from his encyclopedias, just didn’t know diddly-squat about football. I wiped the sweat off my face with the back of my arm and scooted closer to the skinny shade tree. “It’s hot as Hades out here. Let’s get our bathing suits and head to the pool later.”
“It closed.” Frankie announced this like the pool was something we didn’t give a toe bone about. Might as well have been saying the Piggly Wiggly was closed.
“What? The Community Pool’s really closed? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Don’t have a cow, Glory.” Frankie looked past me, over at the football players running around the field and the pep squad girls hollering cheers to empty bleachers. “You were so mad from last night, I didn’t want to say anything,” he said. “Daddy and the Town Council put a sign up this morning saying they’re fixing the cracks.”
“There aren’t any cracks.”
“Daddy’s committee had a meeting. He told me and J.T. it’s really to keep the colored people out.” Frankie took off his glasses, started cleaning them on his shirt. His voice got quiet. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Well, what’re we gonna do about it? I’ll have a sun-stroke if I have to spend the rest of the summer with no pool. I’m not swimming in the Pee Pool where all the babies go wading.”
“I don’t know” was all Frankie said.
“It’s not right for some stupid committee of old people to decide who swims in a pool and who doesn’t. Why’s it a secret anyhow? A secret from who?”
Frankie put his glasses back on and shrugged his shoulders at me. “A secret from people like you who’d get mad about it, I guess,” he said.
“Well, it’s worth getting mad about. And what about the Fourth of July picnic and parade?” I asked him. “What about my birthday party in eight more days? It’ll open back up by then, I’m sure.”
Frankie pulled up a few more chunks of grass. He didn’t say anything for a minute or two. “I don’t know, Glory. My brother says it’s a good thing they don’t let colored people and Yankees in there to swim,” he said. “J.T. thinks coloreds and Yankees stink.”
“You wanna know who stinks? J.T. stinks, that’s who. He doesn’t know anything. And your daddy doesn’t run this town, does he?”
Frankie may have thought his daddy knew everything, but what he said about the pool didn’t seem right. “I’m going to see for myself.”
We walked our bikes to the sidewalk. Then we rode real slow down the block. Maybe if I didn’t get there and read the sign, the pool wasn’t closed. But there it was, tacked up on the locked front gate of the Hanging Moss Community Pool for all the world to see: Closed for repairs until further notice. By order of the Hanging Moss Town Council.
“You see anybody in there patching the cracks?” I pushed my fingers through the metal fence and peered inside. The water was glimmering and peaceful, not a ripple, not one clue that anything was wrong. I pressed my face up closer for a better look. “Is somebody fixing the broken part of the fence over by our mimosa tree?”
All Frankie said was “Nope.”
“I want to rip that pool sign to a million pieces and climb over the fence and swim.”
Really and truly, what I wanted was to scream real loud at Frankie’s daddy. Maybe even at Frankie. Deep down inside, a small part of me wanted Laura and her mama to go on back to Ohio so the pool would open.
“It’s not right. It might as well be the dead of winter in there, Frankie,” I said. “Nobody’s swimming. No lifeguard whistles. No radios blaring. Nothing like it used to be.” I pushed my fingers harder through the fence.
Frankie just shook his head. “I told you so.”
“I’m getting out of here.” I rode my bike down the street fast. I leaned it next to the tallest tree shading the library sidewalk. I didn’t look back once at Frankie.
I banged open the library’s front door and charged in.
Miss Bloom sat at the big checkout desk. “Hello, Glory.” She mouthed the words as she patted the chair next to her. I sank into the hard wooden seat and propped my head in my hand.
“I can assure you that won’t be happening,” she said into the phone. She straightened her back and spoke very slowly. One word at a time. Like maybe the person on the other end of that phone wasn’t hearing her too good. “We will not” — she stopped to take a deep breath — “be removing” — another breath — “library chairs. Anyone who wants to use the Hanging Moss Free Public Library is welcome here. Unlike the Town Council’s Pool Committee, I will never allow the library to close.” Then Miss Bloom hung up the telephone with two fingers, so carefully I thought maybe it had cooties on it sh
e didn’t want to touch.
“Are you mad at somebody, Miss B.?” I asked her.
“That was one of my board members. They worry there’s going to be trouble at the library. They are suggesting I remove all the chairs so anyone they think doesn’t belong here won’t be welcome to sit down.” Miss Bloom fiddled with the box of paper clips on her desk. “Or they say to close it altogether. Over my dead body will the library close.”
“The pool’s closed,” I told her. “Frankie’s daddy claims it won’t open in time for July Fourth, the picnic and parade.”
“I’ve worried about that.” She shook her head and sat back in her chair. “It’s a shame.”
“I might not go to the stupid celebration anyhow.” I twisted my ponytail.
“Glory, you love the Fourth of July — it’s your birthday.” Miss Bloom peered over her cat’s-eye glasses. “Besides, Laura is counting on sitting with you.”
“The parade’s the same stupid thing every year.” I crossed my arms and slumped deeper into the chair. “A bunch of old men carrying flags. A parade queen with a fake crown. Mrs. Simpson and the Esthers in their muumuus and bathing caps covered with plastic flowers, perched up on the biggest float like they own the town.” I looked at Miss Bloom. “What fun’s a July Fourth celebration when it’s blazing hot and there’s no swimming pool? You think anybody’ll remember it’s my birthday? Not even Jesslyn! Even if I have a party, Frankie’s daddy won’t let him come. Everything’s going wrong!” I stopped to catch my breath. “How can anybody think closing the pool’s fair?”
“That’s a lot of questions, honey.” Miss Bloom pulled a big book off the shelf behind her and dusted it with her hankie, which was embroidered with cats. When she slipped her hankie back up her jacket sleeve, she set the book in front of me, real careful. “Look here. We have scrapbooks from every celebration,” she said.
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