The boy on the steps with his mom wasn’t yelling anymore, but just shaking, his face buried in his mom’s lap while she rubbed his back until the colored men and some other ladies helped them both up and they went back inside the church. Walter Wratchford lit another cigarette from the butt of the first one, and I just stood there with him, not wanting to move unless somebody might notice us again. I looked down at my uniform and was glad at least I was wearing the long khaki pants instead of the shorts with the high green socks and red garter belts.
I asked Walter Wratchford if we were going in, too. He said no, they didn’t want us in there, and he didn’t like churches besides, so we waited in the sticky afternoon and there wasn’t any talking after that. I hoped if I was just silent this might all end without me having to do anything except eventually just get back in Walter Wratchford’s car and him drive me back home.
The wind shifted and the sky got darker, but I couldn’t tell if it was storm clouds or smoke from the tire fire.
Walter Wratchford reached in his car for his milk and drank the rest of it, and the doors opened from the colored church and out came everybody, starting with the preacher, a tall, crooked old man with a big Bible, followed by six colored men in black suits carrying the wood coffin. At Mr. Rhodes’s funeral there was an American flag spread out on top of the coffin, but there wasn’t one this time. It was a nice box, though — some kind of dark polished wood with shiny brass handles. The six men carried it up on their shoulders and didn’t seem to have any trouble getting it down the steps. They headed off not to the hearse but around the side of the church, where everybody followed. I didn’t know most of the colored people except for a few: Chollie Ellis, and the fried-chicken lady Miss Deas, and the boy that had run outside the church before, and his mom holding on to him like she was afraid if she didn’t he might run off again.
“Come on,” Walter Wratchford said. “Get your trumpet.”
I started to tell him it wasn’t a trumpet, it was a bugle — a trumpet had keys to change the notes, and a bugle was just about how you positioned your lips and how you blew in it — but he probably didn’t want to hear all that, so I didn’t say anything. We didn’t follow the crowd of colored people directly, but went the opposite way around the back of the church instead, where it turned out they had a little cemetery. They didn’t have any grass there, either, just like in their yards, but they took good care of it, anyway, and there was one big tree right in the middle, an oak tree that spread out pretty wide so it shaded most of the graves. Where they brought the coffin wasn’t in the shade, though, but just outside it, in the sun. The wind must have shifted and blown away the smoke from the tire fire. It was actually a pretty nice day except for the funeral.
Walter Wratchford and me stayed a ways away from where the colored people gathered together with the coffin, but I could still see the ropes they had laid across the open grave they had dug. The men from the hearse took hold of the ends of the ropes while the pallbearers set the coffin down, and then they lowered the coffin into the ground.
The old preacher raised up one of his hands and read the “dust to dust,” and then “I go before you to prepare a table at the house of my Father,” which is what they read at Mr. Rhodes’s funeral, too. Everybody was crying, even Walter Wratchford a little bit, but I wasn’t for some reason, and I didn’t know why. The preacher finished and they all bowed their heads in the sunshine, but now it seemed cold to me, and when Walter Wratchford told me, “All right, you can play,” my bugle felt like it weighed about fifty pounds. I got through it all right, though —“Day is done, gone the sun”— but kept my eyes closed the whole time. When I opened them, I expected all the colored people to be looking at me, but most of them were already heading back to the front of the church and their cars.
Chollie Ellis nodded, and I appreciated that, but the colored boy who was the little brother looked kind of mad and kept glaring back at me and Walter Wratchford while his mom and some other people led him away. He looked like he wanted to spit on us or at least at us, but he was too far away and probably his mouth was too dry. I don’t know if he was one of the boys that chased me and Wayne out of the Boogerbottom, but I bet if he had a rock right then, he would have thrown it at me.
Me and Walter Wratchford waited until all the colored people’s cars were gone. You could see a big cloud of dust from where they had all been parked, and pretty soon we were the only ones still there except for the few cars at the houses. I didn’t say a word to Walter Wratchford most of the way home, and he didn’t say anything to me, either, except to lay a five-dollar bill on the seat between us. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, of course, but I took it, anyway, and stuck it in my pocket. I felt bad, but not too bad, because Dad hadn’t ever said anything about me not taking money for playing at a colored person’s funeral. Plus, I didn’t want Walter Wratchford to set fire to that five-dollar bill and burn it up, too.
Finally, when we got to the Peace River bridge, I said something. I asked Walter Wratchford about when he told Mom that the colored soldier was the first killed — did he mean first soldier, or first colored soldier?
He looked at me hard for about a minute. I thought he was going to crash the car. Then he said, “You think we ought to distinguish between the two?”
“No, sir,” I said, even though he’d told me about a million times not to call him sir. “I didn’t mean that. Not anything like that.” I wasn’t sure what I had said wrong, but I didn’t want him mad at me so I said I was sorry.
He asked what-hell I was sorry for, but I knew he didn’t expect an answer. We bounced across the bridge past the Sand Mountain city limits sign, and I leaned against the car door until I felt the rope give and the door sway open a little so I had to sit back up.
Walter Wratchford turned and spit out his window. After that he stared straight ahead as we drove through town and back to my house. Without looking at me this time, he said, “I knew what you meant.”
Then he said there was this thing he had figured out in the war and he guessed I didn’t understand it just yet — a lot of people didn’t understand it — that there might be hundreds of categories for the living, but there wasn’t but one category for dead.
Dad still wasn’t home from work when I got back, and I changed right away and didn’t say anything about it at dinner, and neither did Mom and neither did Tink. Wayne just wanted to know where I got all the money, and when I told him, he said he didn’t believe me. We were in bed and I was too tired to get in an argument with him.
I kept thinking about what Walter Wratchford had said about only one category for dead. I didn’t understand it but wanted to. I thought about that colored boy I saw, too, and could almost still hear him crying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” I thought about the way the colored people looked at me like they didn’t know what the heck I was doing there with Walter Wratchford and my bugle, playing “Taps,” and I wondered if us being white to them was like them being colored to us — sort of the only thing they saw: not me exactly, or Walter Wratchford exactly, just the white — and I figured probably so.
THE NEXT NIGHT WAS SATURDAY, which was when I was supposed to be meeting Darla and going to the Skeleton Hotel. I didn’t ever go to sleep so didn’t have to wake myself up when it got to be midnight. I didn’t even get undressed before I went to bed.
Wayne snored like a train, so I could barely hear myself climb down from the top bunk, or open the bedroom door, or walk down the hall. I decided that instead of climbing out the window, I would just go out the front door and leave it unlocked, which was what I did, and there wasn’t a single soul awake anywhere on Orange Avenue when I walked down to the corner by David Tremblay’s. I thought about peeking in some windows but didn’t want to be late for Darla, and besides, I didn’t know what there was to see, anyway, since nobody had any lights on.
I was scared to be sneaking out again and maybe get caught by Mom and Dad and put on restrictions, and scared to be going back to t
he Skeleton Hotel, too, with the ghost lady and the Howler, but I also was kind of looking forward to it being me and Darla squeezed together between two of the Sinclair gas pumps to watch the hotel, and I was kind of thinking she might even want to do some kissing. I had been thinking about that a lot lately, actually, and once I even had a dream about it.
As for that story about Darla and the colored boy and the fireworks — I decided it was probably a big fat lie, and even if it wasn’t, maybe I didn’t care.
I saw Darla coming down Second Street from the direction of her house, right in the middle of the street, partly walking and partly tap-dancing until she saw me, and then she looked around and said, “Wayne didn’t come?”
It hurt my feelings that she asked me that. “No, you told me to make sure he didn’t — remember?”
She nodded but didn’t smile. “Good,” she said. “So let’s get going,” and we did, but she kept looking behind us, I guess checking or maybe even hoping we were being followed by my stupid brother, not that you could see too far back, as dark as it was. After a while, though, when we got to the churches near downtown, she grabbed my hand and swung it and then pulled me and said, “Let’s run the rest of the way,” which we did, all the way to the Sinclair station.
It was quiet as anything once we got there, just like the time before. In fact, just about everything was like the time before, except no Wayne. And just like I hoped, Darla and I sat together between the two pumps. I felt the bones of her — shoulder and elbow and hip — so it wasn’t soft at all the way it had been when we rode Bojangles. She still held my hand, which was nice except my palm was sweaty and I wanted to wipe it off on my pants, but I was afraid if I did she might not hold my hand again and I knew I would be too nervous to reach over for hers. It was all very complicated in my head, so I figured the best thing to do was just nothing, so that’s what I did except for making a hoot-owl noise until Darla told me to hush and don’t be so silly. I said I wasn’t being silly; that’s what you do in Scouts to signal to somebody where you are. She said she guessed it was OK then, but who was I trying to signal? Of course I wasn’t trying to signal anybody really but I wasn’t about to tell Darla that, so I said you also did it just in case there was another Scout anywhere around you didn’t know about.
She said, “Well, I don’t hear another hoot owl.”
“No,” I said. “So that’s good; now we know there’s nobody else here.”
Darla said, “Your hand is sweaty.”
I said, “How do you know it’s not your hand that’s sweaty?”
She said, “Girls don’t sweat; they expire.”
That made me laugh. I told Darla she meant “perspire” not “expire.” She didn’t think it was so funny, though, and she pulled her hand away and told me I could hold my own sweaty hand next time, and anyway, she didn’t think anything was going to happen here tonight, and she didn’t believe I ever saw anything that other time, and she bet I made the whole thing up.
I didn’t even have to defend myself because right then we heard the elevator at the Skeleton Hotel kick on with the loud hum of the gearbox and the grinding of the pulleys and the creaking of the steel girders. Darla grabbed my hand again and squeezed so hard I thought she was going to break my fingers, and when the elevator hit bottom and somebody walked out from the tarp at the edge of the farmers’ market, she squeezed even harder to where I heard my knuckles pop.
It was a lady again, the same lady in the same coat but she didn’t have a hood over her head like before, so when she got in the middle of the intersection under the stoplight, we sort of saw her face, and when she got under the streetlight on the corner nearest to where we were hiding, we saw her face real good and there was no doubt about it — it was Darla’s mom.
Darla’s mouth was open for a second while she stared, and I could tell she was holding her breath. Mrs. Turkel. What the heck was she doing there? She kept walking, right near us, and she opened a purse she was carrying and pulled out a hairbrush and brushed her hair a couple of times, hard like she was mad at it, and then she threw the brush back in her purse and snapped it shut.
She was past us by then and we only saw the back of her for another second, and then she was gone, just like the time before, when it was just me, except we could hear her hard shoes on the sidewalk — they cracked and echoed, cracked and echoed with every step, fainter and fainter until I wasn’t sure if I still heard them or not.
I said, “Darla, that was your mom.”
She didn’t say anything back.
“What was she doing here?” I said.
Darla still didn’t say anything.
“Darla?” I said. She was still holding her breath.
“Darla?” I was afraid she might faint if she didn’t start breathing pretty soon.
I shook my hand loose and grabbed her shoulder. She was starting to scare me. “Darla?”
She turned and looked at me and her face was blank like she forgot I was even there. “What?” she said.
I said again, “That was your mom.”
She said, “No, it wasn’t. Don’t be ridiculous.”
I said, “It was. You saw her. She walked right by us.”
Darla said, “That wasn’t my mom. You probably need glasses. I saw that lady before. She works at the A&W Root Beer.”
I knew who she was talking about, and the lady that worked at the A&W didn’t look anything like who we just saw, but at the same time, Darla was so sure the way she talked, it made me wonder a little bit if I was going blind or something and maybe she was right, maybe I did need glasses. But I could have sworn that was Darla’s mom, I really could.
I was just about to ask Darla what the heck the lady from the A&W or whoever it was was doing at the Skeleton Hotel, anyway, but I didn’t have the chance because the elevator started up again and we heard it going to the top and then it stuck there for a minute and then came back down.
“It’s the Howler,” I said, but Darla said it couldn’t be the Howler — he wasn’t howling, for goodness sake. It was just somebody leaving that was up there, too, and she was right, because pretty soon a car started up from behind the Skeleton Hotel and we saw it when it came around the building to the stoplight — that old blue Ford Fairlane of Walter Wratchford’s with the red doors. He didn’t even bother to stop at the light; he just motored right through the intersection going real slow, the engine chugging and smoke pouring out of the exhaust. I saw Walter Wratchford; he had one arm hanging out the window, and the other holding a cigarette, and one finger all alone on top of the steering wheel, and he headed east down First Street toward the Peace River bridge. It must have taken about five minutes after he was gone for that big cloud of exhaust to settle.
As soon as it did, though, Darla was halfway across the road before I even quite realized where she was going, and I took off after her.
“Wait,” I said. “You can’t go there. What about the Howler?”
She didn’t look back at me.
I said, “Where are you going?”
“Up there,” she said. She meant the top of the Skeleton Hotel.
I didn’t want to follow her, but I didn’t want her to leave me, either, so I kept going, too: under the traffic light, under the streetlight, all the way over to the Skeleton Hotel. My head hurt from everything happening so fast. Plus I didn’t get how Darla could be scared one minute — as scared as me — waiting for the Howler, and then the next minute see her mom and Walter Wratchford and have everything change. Now she didn’t seem scared, just mad and upset and a bunch of other things I didn’t understand because my mind wasn’t hardly working at all except to tell me to stay with her, even when she pulled back the tarp of the farmers’ market and ducked in, and even when she fumbled with the cage to the elevator to pull it back, and even when we got in on a wood pallet that was the elevator floor, and even when she pulled on some levers, trying to make something work until the elevator jerked to a start and I lost my balance and grabbe
d on to her as it went up and she grabbed me back and we both held on like that all the way to the top.
We got there pretty fast and the elevator jerked again when it stopped, and this time I did fall down. Darla didn’t grab me, though, but just walked out on the roof, which was flat, and I crawled out behind her. There was nothing around the edge up there, just like the elevator, but Darla went right over to it and looked down at the intersection and the Sinclair station and the City Hall and the 7-Eleven while I stayed crouched in the middle at a little shed next to the elevator. I was shaking even though it wasn’t cold, and my teeth were chattering and everything, and all I could think about was what if Walter Wratchford came back and caught us. I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them to try to get warm and couldn’t believe I was where I was, and so scared I thought I might wet my pants.
I whispered, “Let’s go back down now,” but I don’t think Darla heard me. She was staring off in the direction of her house, even though you couldn’t see that far — not that I was about to stand up and go over there and check about that myself. She walked all the way around the edge of the roof like she was looking for something, and then she came back to the shed next to me and looked in. There was a bottle of something and she didn’t even wait or anything, she just unscrewed the cap and took a drink from it and handed it to me.
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