The problem with getting away from the colored boys and their rocks was we had to go deeper into the Boogerbottom to do it, and we didn’t know where we were going, and we had to ride through people’s yards because it was too slow pedaling through sand. I recognized that lady Miss Deas’s house because of the chickens hanging from the line and the dogs circling underneath that stopped every now and then to lick at the blood puddling up in the dirt. If colored people really did eat dogs like David Tremblay said, then they hadn’t gotten around to eating those dogs. We kept going, but after that there weren’t any landmarks to navigate. The streets got narrower and darker where the fat oak trees grew together in a canopy that made it seem like we were riding down a tunnel to somewhere underground. There were houses with front doors three feet off the ground and only a stack of concrete blocks to get up that high because the porches had fallen off and been dragged to the side in a heap of broken boards and rusted nails. There were the bodies of cars or rather parts of different cars welded together and made to stand up on other concrete blocks like somebody might someday come back and reattach them to an engine and some tires to see if they could run, maybe one of those gunk-coated engines we saw at a couple of houses hanging by thick rope from fat tree limbs. There were more chickens than dogs running around, and hardly any cats, and a goat that we saw tied to a tree, and a girl hitting him with a stick. I felt kind of naked without a shirt on. We saw a bunch of other colored girls in one yard, playing double jump rope, three of them jumping all at once and going so fast that it made me dizzy and I nearly wrecked my bike swerving around them. A couple of the girls joined the chase then, too, and grabbed their own rocks like the boys and threw at us but missed by a mile.
At the Peace River the oak trees were so big and covered with so much gray Spanish moss that it looked like clouds. We couldn’t go any farther in that direction unless we planned to ride straight through black mud and cattails and then swim, and since bikes don’t float, we turned north instead. The street there was in better condition, baked hard I guess because there was more clay that near to water, so we picked up speed, and when I looked back, I could still see the colored kids a couple of blocks behind us but fading, and by the time we reached the Tire Tower after another few blocks, they were nowhere in sight.
“Jeezum Crow,” Wayne said. “Look at all those tires.” A short colored man with gray hair and a gray beard waved a rag at us from inside his fence, and behind him about a hundred feet high and covering about an acre of land was tires like you’d never seen before: hundreds of them, thousands, ten thousands of tires — car tires, truck tires, tractor tires, tires from some mine vehicle so big with treads so wide you could almost fit somebody to hide in one, and retreads, tire scraps, inner tubes. I said, “It’s like the colored people’s Sand Mountain. You think anybody gets to climb the Tire Tower?”
Wayne said he doubted it. We rode on a little slower after that until our hearts stopped pumping ninety miles an hour from the chase. Eventually we came to a one-lane paved road in the middle of some orange groves that we hoped would take us to somewhere we knew, so we went that way. I asked Wayne if those colored boys were the same ones that we got in the mud war with that time at Bowlegs Creek. Wayne said he couldn’t tell, it all happened so fast, and everybody said they all looked alike, anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
All the flyers had got bounced out of our baskets during the chase through the Boogerbottom, but neither me or Wayne got hit by any of the rocks except that one that the first little boy threw and that Wayne still had in his pocket for a souvenir. It turned out that it hadn’t really hit Wayne in the ear like I thought; it just plinked him.
“Well, you must have done something to antagonize them.” That’s what Dad said when we told him the story that night. It was during dinner and I immediately lost my appetite the way I always did when he yelled.
“We didn’t, Dad,” I said. “Wayne, show him the rock.”
Wayne just sat there looking down at his plate. I could tell he was mad, because he wasn’t saying anything. Tink said she wanted to see the rock but Wayne still didn’t budge. Dad said never mind about a rock; he wanted to know exactly what happened.
“They just followed us,” I said. “They got the little one to throw the rock. Wayne picked it up and they ran away. They came back with the big kids and started chasing us.” I didn’t mention the Ban-Lon shirt. I had told Mom that part when we first got home, and she said there was no need to bring it up with Dad, because it would make him too mad.
Not that he wasn’t mad enough as it was. “And nobody said anything to anybody? You didn’t call them any names?”
“No, sir.”
Mom was rubbing her temples. She said, “Hank, I think the boys have told you all there is to tell. Isn’t it possible that you miscalculated the attitudes down there? Those people have plenty to be resentful about.” Mom knew a lot about this stuff because she had been reading a book, I believe it was called The Killer Mockingbird, that sounded like a horror story but she said it was about Negroes.
I asked if I could be excused. Tink asked if she could please see the darn rock already? The whole house felt like it was made out of glass or something. I didn’t even know why everybody was so upset. I couldn’t wait to tell Darla, and to tell people at school, too — that me and Wayne got attacked by colored kids. It would probably make me pretty popular for them to know that happened. In fact, if I wasn’t nervous about using the phone, I would have started telling people that very night. If there was one thing I had figured out, it was that people like you better when something bad happens to you that wasn’t your fault. I learned that lesson in the fourth grade from a kid named Bobby, who had leukemia. Everybody was always giving him things, saying prayers about him, asking him if he wanted to do stuff. I was pretty jealous of him. He was very popular until he died.
I thought maybe if I finished my homework fast I might be allowed to go outside even though it was dark and a school night. Then I could go up the block and tell David Tremblay, at least, before Wayne got the chance to, and maybe zoom over to Darla’s and tell her, too. “Can I please be excused, please?” I asked again, but all I got for an answer was somebody knocking at the back door.
“Good garden peas,” Dad said. Mom said I could be excused to go see who it was, so I did. I expected it to be David Tremblay, or that girl Scooty who was Tink’s friend, but when I got to the door, it was none of them. It was Chollie the janitor, and he was standing on the carport in his work uniform and holding a cap in his hands that he was wringing out even though it didn’t look wet to me. Chollie looked startled when I turned on the back porch light — so startled I almost turned it off again, but then I figured that would be rude, so I just said, “Are you here to see my dad? Hold on, I’ll go get him. Just a second. I’ll be right back.” I had never in my life seen anybody colored come to our house at night — I didn’t think it was even allowed — and hardly ever in the day except every now and then looking for yard work, or maybe to buy a possum after a hurricane.
“Well, who is it?” Dad said.
“It’s Chollie.” That’s when it hit me: he must have come to tell Dad about me still peeing outside at the high school. He must have found my new spot behind the gym!
Dad looked surprised. “Mr. Ellis is here at the house?”
I said, “Who’s Mr. Ellis?”
Dad was already getting up from the table. “Mr. Ellis is Chollie Ellis. You call him Mr. Ellis.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Mom was kind of nervous, you could tell, though probably not about the same things I was nervous about. We heard Dad open and close the back door, and he also turned off the back porch light, which I bet Chollie — Mr. Ellis — appreciated. But we didn’t hear anything else for a few minutes except the low mumble of them talking until even that got drowned out by the racket of the dishes that Mom started stacking right there at the table, even though whenever me or Wayne or Tink did that, she got on us abou
t it and said we should be more careful, we might chip a plate, and we should always take them one at a time to the kitchen, and also it wasn’t ever polite to scrape food at the table, but there she was doing that, too.
Dad sat us down in the living room after Mr. Ellis left and Mom took Tink off to put her to bed. “I don’t want you to tell anybody about what happened down at the Boogerbottom,” he said. “Mr. Ellis has been helping me with the election and he’s looking into it and says those boys will be punished for throwing the rocks. I believe it was all a big misunderstanding, and I don’t want this to affect the campaign.” He clapped his hand on Wayne’s knee and said he knew he could count on us, but Wayne pulled his leg away and stood up.
“It wasn’t a misunderstanding, Dad. Those kids hate us. You can tell. And I don’t see why we have to go down there, anyway. Everybody knows they don’t vote or anything, and they’re not gonna vote no matter what you promise them. And everybody else isn’t going to vote for you, either, because of what you promised. And I don’t see why we have to do all this work when it’s you that’s running for the election and not us. It’s not fair —”
I was just happy neither Dad or Mr. Ellis had mentioned my peeing, but it was obvious from the way Dad was frowning that Wayne had gone too far. Even Wayne must have realized it, because he stopped talking suddenly. Dad just said, “Are you through?”
Wayne stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yes, sir.”
“You sure there’s nothing else you need to say?”
Wayne hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Dad’s voice was calm, the way he got sometimes just when you were sure he’d start yelling instead. It was pretty effective at making you feel bad for whatever it was you did — a lot more effective than the yelling, actually.
“Sorry for being disrespectful,” Wayne said.
Dad nodded. “All right, then. I think it’s time you boys did your homework and got ready for bed.”
“Yes, sir,” Wayne said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. Wayne left but I stayed behind. There was something I had to ask. “Dad, did Mr. Ellis say anything else about anything else, or was it just about what happened to me and Wayne?”
“What do you mean? Did he say anything else about what?”
“I don’t know, just anything.”
Dad made the church roof and steeple and open the doors and see all the people with his fingers. “No, I don’t believe so.”
“OK. Thanks, Dad.” I headed for the bedroom, relieved, but then Dad said, “Oh,” and to wait a minute, he guessed there was this one other thing Mr. Ellis told him.
“What was it?” My voice sounded about like a mouse squeaking.
“He just said he thought you were quite the dancer,” Dad said. “Now, where do you suppose he got an idea like that?”
I said I didn’t know. I looked over at Dad to see if I was in trouble or something but he was smiling, which was a big relief.
Something woke me up in the night. It was voices from the other part of the house. It was Mom and Dad having an argument. Dad said, “I thought you wanted me to,” and Mom said, “I did but maybe you’re trying to do too much,” and, “Maybe you started something that’s gotten out of control,” and, “Maybe the children shouldn’t be involved,” and Dad said, “I’m not alone. A lot of people agree with this,” and Mom said, “And a lot of people don’t. You might pave some of the Negro streets — they would let you do that to keep things peaceful — but you shouldn’t have gone after annexation, too,” and Dad’s voice got louder, and Mom said, “Don’t be so loud; you’ll wake up the children,” and Dad said, “I’m not loud,” and Mom said, “Yes, you are,” and I heard footsteps and a door close and I fell back asleep but I dreamed about those colored kids chasing us, and then it was those guys Moe and Head laughing and laughing and laughing at me because I wet my pants and everybody could see the dark stain spreading wider and wider no matter how I tried to cover myself up.
ON SUNDAY THE TIRE TOWER CAUGHT FIRE, down in the Boogerbottom. The whole sky over Sand Mountain turned black and stayed that way. You couldn’t go outside without choking on the smoke, and it stunk worse than a skunk or a polecat or a pulp mill. A black film got all over everything and everybody, and if you stayed outside too long, you started to look like you were colored. People said they put the owner of the Tire Tower in jail for letting it happen, and not having a permit, either. Me and Wayne had seen him when we were on our bikes running from the colored kids. He didn’t seem like somebody who belonged in jail, but I guess you never know what makes a criminal.
There was a story going around that somebody set the Tire Tower on fire on purpose, but nobody seemed to know why they might have done it. I also heard that all those tires in the Tire Tower were worth a million dollars and that the Firestone Company would pay that much so they could melt them back down into rubber and make new tires, but I doubted that was true or else why was it just the one colored man collecting them all those years?
There was nothing the Sand Mountain volunteer fire department could do about a tire fire except make sure it didn’t spread onto trees or houses or anything, and it wasn’t until a couple of days later when the fire finally burned itself down to where it just smoldered that we learned what was really going on. That’s when Dad got a note saying, “Now you see what happens.” It was written on the back of one of Dad’s campaign flyers that somebody mailed back to us. There was also a picture somebody drew of two people kissing — one white, one colored — and they wrote underneath it that Dad must love colored people, only they didn’t say it quite that way. I saw it on Dad’s dresser and showed it to Wayne.
“Oh, man,” Wayne said. “They must mean the tire fire.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” Except that I didn’t really know. Why would they burn down the Tire Tower? Dad just said he was going to get the streets paved in the Boogerbottom, not anything else, and he didn’t have anything to do with the Tire Tower, anyway.
A police officer came to our house and his name was O. O. Odom. I wondered if he was the same one from the night me and Wayne and Darla went down to the Skeleton Hotel and he chased me from the Sinclair station. Officer Odom looked over the flyer pretty carefully. Him and Dad were in the front room but we could see them from the family room, where we were pretending to watch TV, only we turned it down really low so we could hear what they were saying, too.
“Now, what makes you think this here is connected to the tire fire?” Officer Odom said. He pronounced it “tar far.”
“What else would it be referring to?” Dad said.
Officer Odom scratched his head. “Well, I guess it could just mean they expect people are going to be mailing you back your papers like this fella did. ‘So now you see what happens.’ They don’t want it, so they send it back to you.” He paused. “Maybe they think you’re being too keen on the colored people.”
Dad stabbed his finger in the middle of the flyer. “Exactly,” he said. “Which was why they set fire to the Tire Tower and wrote ‘Now you see what happens.’”
Officer Odom shook his head. “But it doesn’t say anything here about the tar far.”
Dad threw up his hands and said, “Fine, fine. Maybe you’re right. Thank you so much for coming by and looking in to all this. We’ll rest easier knowing you’re on the job.”
Officer Odom looked like Dad hurt his feelings, and I had to admit Dad did sound kind of sarcastic. “You don’t have to be that way,” Officer Odom said, and picked up his hat from the coffee table.
Mom came out of the kitchen and went past us into the front room. She must have heard what Dad said and how he said it, because she was really nice to Officer Odom. She shook his hand and thanked him for coming over, in a way that sounded like she meant it. After he left, she gave Dad a look and then he left, too. Mom said he was going to the shed to work on something, but I snuck out later and peeked in the door and saw he was in there smoking a cigarette even th
ough he was supposed to have quit a long time before.
On Wednesday I went over to Darla’s for a dance lesson. Her mom said it was time I learned the tango, which was fine with me because I was sick of worrying about the election and the threats and the tire fire and was happy to think about something else for a while. At first Darla’s mom did it with me, but my head only came up to her boobs and they kept knocking me around, which was very embarrassing. You have to be really close for the tango, and any time I leaned my head away from getting hit, she pulled me back in. I couldn’t say anything about the boob-knocking, of course, but Mrs. Turkel must have finally noticed because she said for Darla to come over and practice with me instead.
Darla had obviously done the tango before, because she grabbed my one hand and pulled our arms out straight in front of us, and she pressed her cheek against my cheek, and she held my other hand down by our sides. Mrs. Turkel put on the record and away we went, following our arms to one end of the room, then dipping, then changing arms and cheeks and following our other arms back to where we started. The only problem was our knees bumping into one another when we did our turns, which must have been my fault because Darla told me it was.
“Watch out, dummy. That hurt,” she said, but I didn’t have to say anything back because her mom told her if she was going to speak to a partner on the dance floor, she should always make sure she was a lady about it. After that when our knees bumped, Darla smiled really big and said, “Pardon me, sir, but I think you might have injured me and could you please not?” It was very phony, but I guess better than being called Dummy.
Anyway, I liked the tango a lot and thought I was getting pretty good at it until Mrs. Turkel said OK, now Darla was going to demonstrate with Darwin, who I hadn’t even noticed was hanging around at the door. Darla said she didn’t want to dance with Darwin, he always squeezed her too tight. Darwin told her not to be a baby — it was beginning to sound like me and Wayne — but once they got started, I could see that it was true. Darwin squeezed so close to Darla that you would have thought he was her boyfriend instead of her brother.
Down Sand Mountain Page 14