Seeing Red

by Kathryn Erskine

  “Putting notions in people’s heads,” the reverend went on, “is just plain dangerous. They start demanding things. They don’t know where they belong any more. No one knows where they belong any more. Everything’s in an uproar.” His voice was turning into a roar. “People get hurt!” He pounded the pulpit. “People get killed!”

  I heard a murmur running through the congregation of amens and a couple of people saying, “That’s right,” along with Mr Reynolds clearing his throat over and over like he had something caught in it.

  “Ida Yates knew her place and her responsibility, too. Why, when she got sick, she hired a black housekeeper, giving that poor woman a job to keep her off welfare.”

  Mama’s foot was shaking up and down.

  “This community has lost two very good souls recently.” He nodded over at us. “Deacon Porter wouldn’t hold no stock in breaking society apart. Uh-uh, no, sir!”

  If “breaking society apart” meant being a bigot like Glen Connor or Mr Dunlop, then Daddy sure would break it apart. Reverend Benson was twisting Daddy into something he wanted Daddy to be, not the man Daddy was, and I didn’t like it one bit! I knew Mama felt the same as me because her foot was jiggling wildly now, and she was sitting up so straight you’d think her spine was a drive shaft.

  The more Reverend Benson went on and the more Mama’s foot bounced up and down, the more I wished he’d shut up. Apart from spouting lies, he was making Mama mad, and that would only make her more determined to run away and live in Ohio.

  After the service we stood in the receiving line and Mama had a fake smile plastered on her face. People came up to Beau and hugged him and said nice things about his mama and said they’d come by and to call them if he needed anything, but I knew from experience that he wouldn’t remember one word.

  The sheriff’s wife fawned all over Beau, telling him what a model citizen and wonderful American his mama had been. When she shook Mama’s hand she held it extra long and said, “That was some sermon, wasn’t it, Betty?”

  Mama’s voice was as phony as her smile. “That was some sermon,” she repeated, less enthusiastically than Mrs Scott. “And here I was, expecting a funeral service.”

  Mrs Scott’s smile faded fast but the next group of people came up to pay their respects, so she walked slowly off.

  When the preacher reached us and held Mama’s hand, talking about his wonderful sermon and how everyone was on the same page, Mama’s toe was tapping the floor a mile a minute and her skin was drawn so tight across her face I thought it might rip.

  Reverend Benson shook my hand and said, “Well, it’s good to see you, stranger. The way you’re avoiding us, people might get the impression that you aren’t a real Christian, and where would that leave you? So what do you say, Red, you ready to rejoin the flock?”

  I had a lot I wanted to say to him, none of it good, but he looked at Mama for the answer. And, after a long moment, she gave him one. “Red prefers to think for himself.”

  I felt my mouth drop open, and I figured Reverend Benson was shocked, too, because his smile turned fake and ended up all teeth. “Oh, you got to watch out for that. That’s likely to get a boy in trouble.” He gave a phony chuckle. “Matter of fact, he has gotten himself in a bunch of trouble, hasn’t he?” He bent down and peered at me. “Skipping school? Vandalizing property? If you’re not careful, you’ll get yourself sent to juvie like Darrell Dunlop.” He straightened and turned to Mama. “Good dose of religion would cure that. We’re always here to help. At Open Doors Baptist Church, our doors are open.” He chuckled again, this time for real. “That’s what I always say, right?”

  “Yes,” said Mama, losing even her fake smile, “that’s what you always say. I need to take care of Beau now.”

  “Of course, of course. Beau, I’ll be by later to check on you, and we’ll say a prayer for your mama.”

  We headed for the car. Except Beau. He just stood there. Mama looked over at me, and I took Beau by the hand and led him to the car. I opened the door and guided him into the front passenger seat and buckled his seat belt for him.

  Mama sniffled and patted his arm. “Beau, you’ll be taking all your meals with us for a while because I won’t have you sitting and eating alone. That’s no good for anyone, believe me.”

  By the time we got back home, it smelled real good. Mama had cooked food ahead and left it in the oven so it was warm. I was still leading Beau by the hand.

  Mama put on her apron. “Red, please set the table.”

  I dropped Beau’s hand. “Table?” I said, like it was some foreign word.

  “Yes,” Mama said, “the table.” She glanced at the piles of papers on the dining room table. “The kitchen table. Plates, forks, and knives, please.”

  While I was setting the table, J came in from outside, got the Ritz crackers down from the cabinet and put some in his Flintstones bowl. He headed into the living room, walking right past Mama at the oven.

  “Where are you going with that bowl?” she asked him.

  “To watch TV.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not. We’re sitting down to eat together.”

  He turned and stared at her. “Why?”

  Mama twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “Because we’re civilized. And that’s what civilized people do.”

  J looked through the dining room to the TV in the living room and back at Mama. “We ain’t been civilized in a real long time.”

  “We haven’t been civilized—” Mama stopped correcting his English and looked at her hands. She twisted her wedding ring a few more times. “You’re right, J,” she said quietly. “But that’s going to change now. We’re all going to eat together.”

  J shrugged and went to his usual place at the table.

  Mama gave me the eyeball, so I sat down, too.

  After she set the casserole dishes in front of me, Mama steered Beau over to the table to join us and sat down at her place, which left one seat for Beau. Daddy’s.

  Beau tugged his hair.

  “Sit down, Beau,” Mama said, and picked up a spoon to start serving the mashed potatoes.

  But at the scratch-squeak of Beau pulling the chair away from the table, Mama, J, and I stared at the gold vinyl. When Beau let go of it, the chair let out a puff of air like a sigh.

  “That’s Daddy’s chair!” J said.

  Beau froze. It felt like a lifetime that Mama’s serving spoon hung in the air above the potatoes, I held my breath, and Beau stood like a statue.

  “But…I guess it’s okay for you to sit there,” J said, and it was as if the whole room finally let its shoulders down and the house was allowed to breathe again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  M*A*S*H

  The weather had turned cold now that it was November, and the leaves had all just about fallen from the trees. I thought that’d make it easier to find a big altar stone, what with all the greenery dying, but it didn’t. As I looked for the stone, I kept trying to make sense of the dates on my map and on George Freeman’s grave that didn’t match up. It made me real uneasy, but I couldn’t figure out just why.

  It was late afternoon on Sunday once I got home from searching, and I could hear J’s loud voice coming from the kitchen and Beau trying to calm him down. Mama said Beau would be hanging out with us now because she had to teach him how to take care of himself, and even teach him how to drive. It was weird how Beau knew a car inside and out but never learned to drive one.

  I walked in the kitchen to see Beau tugging his hair, Mama standing with her hands on her hips, and J whining.

  “I’m only seven!”

  “You’re almost eight,” Mama said, “and you can throw dirty clothes into a machine just as well as I can.”

  “But, Mama, I don’t know what to do with them after that!”

  “When the washing machine stops, you take the clothes out and put them in the dryer.”

  “I can show you how,” Beau said. “Your mama explained it to me. I can even show yo
u how to fold all your clothes up real good.”

  J glared at him. “Thanks a lot, Beau!”

  I had to grin, even when Mama said that doing our own laundry applied to me, too. It couldn’t be that bad. Heck, tossing clothes into a couple of machines was easy, and I could skip the folding part and stuff my clothes in the drawers.

  Mama carried on about how women had better things to do than spend their whole lives picking up after men. She went on so much she sounded just like she did at the beginning of both M*A*S*H episodes we’d watched, and I had to grin.

  Mama stared at me. “What’s so funny, Red?”

  “I was just thinking, ‘That’s what I like to see, women doing something constructive with their lives.’ ”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “You!”

  “What?”

  “You say it when you watch M*A*S*H.”

  “I do not!”

  I about busted out laughing. “Yes, you do!”

  She stopped and thought a minute. I don’t know if she believed me, but she sniffed and said, “Well, it’s true, anyway. Women are just as strong as men. Not in the same ways, maybe, but we can do anything you all can do. And, what’s more, you can do the same things I can. As a matter of fact, it’s about time you both learned how to cook for yourselves.”

  “What?” J cried. “It’s all your fault, Red! You and your big, fat mouth!”

  She glared at us with a look that said we’d better shut up right then. “If you’re expecting some woman to do all your cooking and cleaning for you, you’ve got another thing coming. By the time you’re grown, women aren’t going to be putting up with all of this, oh, no, they’re not!”

  She was sounding like Miss Georgia now. And she wasn’t finished. “I’m not raising any lazy men around this house. You’d best pitch in and learn how to take care of yourselves. The times, they are a’changin’, boys.”

  We rolled our eyes. It was a bad choice.

  “Excuse me?” Mama’s hands were on her hips, and her eyes were shooting daggers.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.

  I guess J wasn’t watching Mama because he rolled his eyes again and said, “Yes, ma’am, sir!”

  On top of learning how to cook fried chicken, M*A*S*Hed potatoes and biscuits from scratch, J got to wash dishes afterwards. I didn’t offer to dry because the job I got took even longer – raking all the leaves out from under the crawlspace of the house. In fact, J was out on his bike before I’d made it three-quarters of the way around the house.

  While I was working on the far side of the house, outside the dining-room window, my rake hit something hard under a pile of leaves. When I heard a clink, I realized it was glass. It was hard to see since it was almost dark, but I brushed the leaves away and found more than a dozen empty Coke bottles. “What the—” It only took me a moment to figure it out.

  “J!” I hollered.

  “What!” When he saw an empty bottle in my hand, he took off, spraying gravel, and pedalled like mad behind the What-U-Want.

  I went the other way, caught him, and dragged him into the back of the store. “Beau! Can you come here?”

  Beau came loping to the back.

  “Have you been missing some bottles of Coke out of the store?”

  “Yes,” Beau said slowly. “But I been putting money in the cash register drawer to pay for them.”

  “But you weren’t drinking them!”

  “No, but I figured whoever took them must need them.”

  “It was J!” I said, shaking J by the arm. “And he didn’t need them. He stole them!”

  “Well, I didn’t know,” J whined.

  “Didn’t know what?” I said. “You knew you weren’t supposed to take them. You even told me Mama said we couldn’t take any Cokes. That’s why you were hiding the empties.” I was so mad I gave his arm another shake. “Shoot! It’s bad enough you stole them. You make a crime even worse when you try cover it up, J. That’s just shameful!”

  J’s snivelling turned into bawling, which made Beau go all soft and mushy. “I’m sure he didn’t mean no harm, Red. He’s just a little boy.”

  I stared at J as I answered Beau. “If he’s big enough to steal and lie about it, he’s big enough to pay for what he did. J, you’re going to have to earn some money so you can pay Beau back.”

  J quit crying long enough to whine. “How am I gonna do that?”

  I thought for a minute, adding up the cost of the Cokes he stole, and came up with an answer. “You have to do all of Beau’s chores for a week, and that includes his laundry!”

  Beau and J both started protesting, but I insisted, telling J, “What would Daddy have said, huh?” That shut him up good.

  “And,” I added, “you have to clean up your mess. Go get all those empty bottles, wash them out, and stack them in the back to be collected. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” He didn’t even say it sarcastically. He said it like I was, well, like I was Daddy. And he went right off and started collecting the bottles.

  J got sent to bed early, which was just as well because we had to watch the news and then it was time for M*A*S*H. I even got Beau to watch M*A*S*H with us. At first, he didn’t want to.

  “I seen it before, Red, and they talk so fast I don’t even know what they’re saying,” but I finally convinced him.

  Mama watched M*A*S*H like it was the news, so she ignored you until the commercials came on. I figured I’d better give Beau a quick explanation of the show before it started. I about busted a gut when Mama said her line about women doing something constructive with their lives, but Beau, hearing her say it for the first time, got all serious and nodded his head, saying, “You’re right, Miz Porter. It’s real good to see that.”

  He kept talking when the show started, too.

  “Is this Vietnam?”

  “No,” I said, even though I’d already told him, “it’s Korea.”

  “It looks like Vietnam.”

  “Except it’s Korea,” I said again.

  “Well, it could be Vietnam.”

  “Beau! It’s Korea, okay? Now, just watch.”

  When the commercials started, Mama turned to me like she’d been holding her thoughts in during the show, and said, “He’s right, Red, it is about Vietnam.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s Korea!”

  “Yes, it’s set in Korea. But it’s really talking about Vietnam. And how a lot of people would like for us to get out of there. Stop losing money, stop losing lives.”

  “Then why don’t they just come out and say that?”

  “You can’t just come out and say that,” Mama said, running her finger around the rim of her iced tea glass.

  “Why not?”

  “Because speaking out against the war is not…a popular opinion.”

  “Your mama’s right,” said Beau, “people would think you weren’t being patriotic. Nobody wants to be unpatriotic.”

  “So nobody says anything?”

  “Well,” Mama said, “some people do, like the hippies and peaceniks, but they’re considered the crazies. Nobody wants to speak up and be one of the crazies.”

  “So everyone just sits there and says nothing? How’s anything ever going to get better?”

  Mama looked down at the braided rug like it was suddenly real interesting to see how those colours coiled around into a tiny little circle of black in the centre.

  “It’s all confusing to me,” Beau said.

  “It’s not just you, Beau,” Mama said, and I could tell she wasn’t just saying it to make Beau feel better because her eyes had that faraway look as she held her iced tea glass with one hand and ran her finger around the rim with the other. “It’s a confusing time. Even in the 1940s when we were at war, we knew where we stood. And in the 1950s it seemed like we had it all.” She sighed. “Then the cracks started showing because we’d only been covering up the problems. It seems like the past few years it’s been nothing but war and uproar, assassin
ations, fighting battles like civil rights, women’s lib—”

  “But those ain’t all bad things, Miz Porter.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean it’s all bad. Some of it’s good – change we needed, like civil rights. In fact, we need more change when it comes to civil rights. We still aren’t treating people equally or fairly.” She sighed.

  I wondered if she was thinking about Thomas. I was.

  “But,” Mama went on, “change can still be hard for people. It’s confusing and sometimes even painful.” She smiled at me. “Like growing pains.”

  I didn’t know if it made me feel better or worse that the rest of the country was in an uproar like my life seemed to be ever since Daddy died. On the one hand it meant I was like everyone else in the country. On the other hand, if grown-ups couldn’t even make sense of everything that was happening, how the heck was I supposed to?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Beau’s Plan

  Before school Monday morning I was puzzling over the old map when I smelled something unusual in the kitchen. Hot food. I bumped into J as we ran for the kitchen.

  Beau was making pancakes. Mama didn’t even have to teach him because he said his mama had taught him how. She made some Nescafé, though, with milk and sugar, and set the NASCAR mug in front of me.

  “Your coffee, sir,” she said with a smile, and I couldn’t help grinning back at her.

  I must’ve eaten eight pancakes before I stopped for a breath because they were real good and I was still making up for going a long time without hot breakfasts. Even J was cramming them in.

  “Boys!” said Mama. “You have plenty of time before the bus comes. Slow down or you’ll get a stomach ache.”

  “Miz Porter?” Beau said, sitting down in Daddy’s chair. “I got me an idea how you can stay right here in Virginia.”

  That stopped me from eating. “How?” I said with my mouth full.

  “You can sell your place and still stay in town. Y’all can just move into my house. I got three bedrooms. Miz Porter, you could have Mama’s, and the boys can share. For free, because it’s done paid for.”