by Tito Perdue
“How come?”
“Liver. It’s no good.”
“Well, I’m real sorry to hear it.” (The boy had red hair and a medley of giant freckles as big as dimes.)
“Nobody knows, except you. I just don’t want people worrying about me too much.”
“Right.”
They turned and, after examining each other for the underlying integrity, shook with solemnity. They were just getting to know each other, Lee felt, when the woman came and, smiling sweetly, invited the older boy into the office. He believed, Lee, that he still had a good ten or fifteen minutes before his own appointment, and almost jumped out of his skin when, that moment, the boy began shrieking in the next room. Apparently the man was in an exasperated mood, the worst of all possible eventualities at that particular time.
“Good Lord!” said Leland to himself. He had counted four blows, and with no suggestion that they might be coming to an end. Near to urinating, he looked for support to General Hood and the crippled arm bound to his side. It was astonishing how the woman kept on typing, adjusting her rhythm to the flagellation going on just twenty feet away. They looked at each other, the typist and Lee.
“You see, Lee, what happens?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So let it be a lesson to you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I do.”
“I know how disappointed your father is going to be.”
Lee also knew.
“And I have to put it in your record, too.” She nodded toward the document, an extensive page with a good deal of inscription on it already. Lee waved it away. It wasn’t the paper he dreaded nearly so much as the superintendent’s strong right arm. Came then the fifth shriek, assuming Lee had counted rightly. His last best hope—and Leland had never understood how a last hope could fail to be the best—his last hope was that the man would have exhausted himself by now and his anger been somewhat abated. That was when his new-made friend spurted out of the office and ran off down the hall, holding his buttocks in one hand.
“Next!” the man called.
Lee stood and, grinning appealingly at the woman, pulled open the door. He needed a moment for his eyes to adjust to the prevailing dimness of that place, a capacious area with a desk and a range of bookshelves that reached, almost, to the ceiling. The man himself stood in the center, his sleeves rolled to the elbows.
“So,” he said. “We meet again.”
“Yes, sir. I guess.”
“Now what do we have on schedule for you today, Lee? Two hundred licks?”
His knees weakened and he reached out, Leland, to catch hold of a piece of furniture; two hundred was death; he knew it, and the man knew it, too.
“All I did was go over to the Canteen! And I didn’t do anything, either!”
“You fixing to cry, Lee? I’m surprised at you.”
“No, sir.” (He was not going to cry, not now and not ever.) And then: “I’m one of Cecil Price’s friends.”
“No doubt. And I suppose he was over there too, yes?”
Lee, declining to answer, looked for and discovered a massy armchair facing the man’s official desk.
“Did I say you could sit down? Odd. I don’t remember that.”
Lee jumped up. The man had a circular face, much weathered, and his nostrils, two matched holes, gave his appearance the look of an electrical outlet. Taking himself by the lapels, he now strode over to his famous “cabinet,” so-called, and drew out a paddle of about three feet in length with three holes bored in it for blisters. The thing was thin and flexible, and had been varnished to match his desk.
“This is what I use on Smitty and Charlie T., people like that. And Cecil.”
“Charlie T. and Smitty are the same people.”
“Oh?” His face took on a puzzled look. The paddle was more flexible than he knew, so much so that he could bend it back “upon itself,” so to speak. “See this? How it bends back and forth?”
Having declined to cry, Lee looked out over the yard where in former days he had been wont to run his heedless ways. There was a dog out there, also the figure of Clarence, who had been expelled last year and didn’t know what to do with himself. Meantime the man had gone to his closet and had exchanged his three-foot paddle for something shorter and with only one hole in it.
“Bend over. Grab your ankles.”
Lee bent. It was a humiliating posture, not something he would have wanted a girl to see. The first blow would tell whether he could endure those to follow. He had decided to think of his rear end as actually belonging to someone else.
Truth was, he heard the noise before he experienced the effect. “And so sound really does travel faster than nerves,” he said. “Interesting.” Came then the effect.
“Whew!” he said, straightening and hopping about in a circle. “I didn’t think it would be like that!”
“No? What did you think?”
“I thought you’d just give me a warning, maybe.”
“Would it do any good? Bend over, Lee. Don’t make me mad.”
Lee held his breath, but the results were just the same.
“Good Lord! Say, how come you have to hit so hard?”
“Listen, my boy, I spent three years in teachers’ college learning how to do this. Come on, bend over, don’t make me mad.”
The third blow was not so awful. The man was tiring, either that or Lee had become hardened to it over the course of the past half-minute. At this rate, the two hundredth blow would be as nothing.
“What are you reading these days, Lee?”
“Sir?”
“Reading.”
“Well, I’m reading this one book about a guy that lived on an island all by himself, and he . . .”
“Okay, that’s all right. What else?”
“Well, I’m reading a book about this other guy who used to hunt tigers, and he . . .”
“That’s a child’s book, Lee. You can do better than that.”
“It’s good!”
“No, it’s not. We have a library in this very building, my friend, with far better stuff than that.”
He had a headache, Lee, his gorge was rising, and his left buttock was largely paralyzed. The man went on: “And how is it, my friend, that you do Cecil’s homework for him and yet he makes better grades than you? Is it pride, Lee? No, I’d really like to know.”
“He would take his girlfriend with him, and one day she killed the biggest tiger of all.”
“Yes, but we’re not talking about that anymore.”
“No, sir.”
“You’re so lucky, and you don’t even know it. Look around you, Lee; it’s 1950.”
Lee looked. Off in the distance, he saw Preston on his bicycle. The boy had been scheduled for a series of dental appointments and was required twice a month to go downtown for that reason. Further, Lee saw the smokestack of the county’s primary employer, a thirty-acre waste littered with rusting equipment where automobile engine manifolds were built.
“But are you listening? It has one hundred fifty million well-matched people, this country of ours, and the level of prosperity is just exactly right. One dollar more would be too much. And Lee?”
“Sir?”
“Every time I hear the word ‘progress,’ that’s when I draw my revolver.”
Always, Leland had regarded this person with respect, and not merely on account of his strong right arm. He watched with fascination as the man now returned to his bureau and took out a broad-brim hat made of felt and put it on.
“This here is my prophesying hat, Lee, my wife calls it.”
“Yes, sir. Reese told me about it.”
“It lets me see into the future. Greatest thing since the invention of shoes and socks.” And then: “Ha! You thought I was going to say since the ‘wheel,’ didn’t you? Hey! Did I say you could sit?”
Lee jumped up. “Shoes, yes, sir. Shoot, I reckon they’re just about the most important thing there is.”
“Don’t patronize me, b
oy. I haven’t forgotten why you’re here.”
“No, sir.”
“Bad things, that’s what I see. A land of four hundred million odd-matched people living tentative lives. By then, you see, America will have become the name of an economy only, and no longer a country.”
“Nothing surprises me, not anymore.”
“Negroes, Lee—I see absolute negroes sitting in the halls of Congress.”
Lee laughed.
“And women. Let me ask you, Lee—who makes the decisions in your house? Your mommy or your daddy?”
“Daddy.”
“See?”
“But she makes dinner.”
“Fair enough. Remember this, Lee: the primacy always belongs to men. Just imagine if it were the other way around.”
Lee wrote it down in memory. The following blow had no real force behind it, none to speak of, and Lee began to believe that he might actually escape the remaining 196. It also encouraged him to see that the man had taken off his hat and had put it away among the paddles.
“Remember!”
Outside, he hobbled back to the main building and was about to collect his clarinet when Cecil stopped him.
“How many did he give you?”
Lee looked down.
“Bastard! Was it fifteen?”
He nodded in the negative, Lee.
“Son-of-a-bitch! He tried that on Clarence last year.”
“Yeah,” spoke up Charlie T. “But ole Clarence beat the shit out of him.”
“I have a headache, too,” said Lee, pointing to his liver.
To relieve him of the weight, Cecil took his clarinet and then guided him down the hall toward where the band was waiting. Six majorettes in short pants were posing for photographs at the back of the room where the trumpet players were facing off in different directions, each playing his own music, as it were. Meantime the saxophonist, a quondam friend, was sitting in the corner, playing the Tony Bennett version of “Because of You.” Feeling that he was home again and safe, Lee glanced about at the group, pleased to see how well the musicians matched their instruments, a ratio in which the most outstanding boys played the shiniest horns. They had three minutes and no more before the conductor would make his appearance and force the lot of them into one organized song. Instead—and he hated these interludes—strangeness gradually fell down over him, and once again he began to feel that he was far away, able to see but not to hear, a crowd of puppets going through their motions.
He walked home that afternoon in the gathering gloom. The days were growing shorter, no question about it. Furthermore, the economy had begun to sputter, President Truman’s fault, according to the adults. Moving through the bad district, he saw a small, naked boy standing out in a yard and then, next, a disabled car that hadn’t been there six hours earlier. He glanced at his watch. He had set the thing ahead to New York time, but it had run down again, and he had only a short while to get him to his radio, his milk and wafers, and today’s Sky King. In spite of that, he stopped and waited for his brother to turn the corner three blocks back and make an inch-tall appearance against the sky. Mrs. Findlay’s plum tree was nearly bare—October it was—and he had no wish to appropriate the few fruits that still adhered to the upper branches. He still did have his headache, of course, and would need another full day before it would go away.
He slept that night between patterned sheets, and then woke to the realization that he had just been through a dream of such great filthiness that he would never wish to discuss it further. Meantime the dog had taken a tack in his paw, and it needed Lee several minutes and his flashlight to draw it out. It was true that he had lately acquired some twenty pieces of pre-war Hungarian postage, using most of his lunch money on them, and they were crying out, so to speak, to be put away in the album. Outside, a car went by, Mr. Kaiser’s 1948 Frasier or, possibly, Mr. Frasier’s 1948 Kaiser—he wasn’t sure. In any case, the headlights penetrated the curtains and sent horrible silhouettes bounding across the ceiling and walls. Too chilly to go outside, Lee opted to read, choosing for that purpose a boring book that he thought the school principal might approve. Two pages of it and he resorted to the window, whence he could observe that the Moon was afflicted with many more black spots than just the night before. The Age of Man was ending. As to the clouds, they had taken on the shapes of some of the ink blots that had been used to test him. He saw bats running behind the Moon, and then an airship in full sail, with pennants furling from the masts. “Good Lord,” he said. “I must be asleep after all!” And was.
Six
He awoke as usual and then, to minimize the time that he needed to be naked, an immoral condition in his opinion, scurried from his pajamas into his jeans. It promised to be a remarkable day, even if he couldn’t right away remember why. Accordingly, he finished off his breakfast in prompt style and, after checking in the mirror to see if he still produced a reflection, ran off down the sidewalk with his pencil box and pineapple sandwich. He allowed three minutes for Sonya to come along, and when she failed to do so, waited half a minute more for Linda, who failed also. Resigned to it, he walked with Mildred Weston. All his life he had known that a boy must walk between a girl and the traffic, fencing her off from danger. But with her he had to fight for it.
“Hey,” he said, “I’m supposed to walk here. Not you.”
“Oh, for goodness sakes.”
She gave way to him, however, and for a full block, no other word was said, until: “I’ve been doing lots of reading lately. Books.”
“I doubt it.”
“Mr. Debardeleben wants me to.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Hm?”
“Twenty-five licks—that’s what I heard.”
“Yes, and I had a headache, too.”
Useless. A thousand years might go by before he’d win any respect from this person who, in any case, was perhaps the fourth- or fifth-least-lovely girl anywhere. Even so, he stayed with her for another moment or two before abandoning her to his brother, who was moving up quickly from behind.
It was when he came within sight of the schoolyard that he recollected why this day was sure to prove so memorable: A chartered bus, fifty feet long, was parked in the yard. Lee ran forward, first to collect his clarinet and then, secondarily, to join with Cecil and the others waiting to climb on board. Gwen, too, was there, but not because she was in the band. No, she had come to say farewell to Cecil, whom she wouldn’t see again for the rest of that day. Lee came closer, listening to her.
“Oh, God, I can’t stand it.”
“You got to,” Cecil said, his voice strained. “Anyway, I’ll be back tonight.”
“Oh, God. It’s so mean, making you go away like this!”
“I got no choice. Anyway, I’m coming back.”
They embraced, Lee coming nearer. Her hair was blonde, and her lips were decorated with a bright lipstick that matched her character and very red sweater. Looking her up and down, Lee could verify the on-going development of her withers and brisket, already so much like an adult’s. What was it like, to hold a creature like that in one’s own arms? He shivered, Lee, and then went around to the other side, where Lloyd and Craig were striving to disentangle their saxophones from the immense pile of instruments that lay in the yard. Three majorettes in short pants were approaching from the distance, followed by two trombonists and the town’s leading percussionist. Just then an automobile, a black Packard, drove out onto the field itself and came toward them. Lee quickly put on a serious expression and stood at attention while the conductor climbed slowly from his car and scanned the crowd.
“All right, gentlemen. Ladies. Smitty. Gather ’round!”
They gathered. He was a vulpine man with thinning hair, deep-set eyes, and a voice damaged by laryngitis. Lee feared him, he admitted it, fearing him more, with some dozen exceptions, than anyone on Earth.
“Yes,” the man went on, “today we go to Tuscaloosa. And if we don’t come back with th
e blue ribbon, so much the worse for you! No, this is serious business. You hear me, Preston?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Serious! And I expect every one of you, Cecil, to do the best playing you can. No, wait a minute, that won’t be good enough. I expect you to do better than you can, right? And if you think you’re going to go barging into this nice little town they got down there and steal everything in sight . . . Well, you can just forget about that, Reese.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t even think about doing any stealing. I haven’t forgotten last year, not by a long shot. You read me?”
They all said, “Yes, sir.”
“No stealing. But if you just got to steal something, for God’s sakes, don’t get caught!”
They now filed on board the bus, the most crucial moment of that particular year. Depending on it, a person could end up sitting next to his choice of persons, or not. But mostly Lee was impressed by the luxuriousness of the conveyance, the upholstered seats, the low ceiling, and sheltered ambiance that cut them off from adult surveillance, save only that of one. And even that person had chosen to sit near the front.
Lee hastened to the rear of the bus and claimed the seat next to the window of the next-to-last berth. It was possible that one of the majorettes in short pants might elect to join him here, though he didn’t really expect that. He would have welcomed a woodwind or flautist almost as much, but was even more pleased when he saw there were enough seats for everyone, and he was to have a whole berth for himself alone. Two trumpet players had meanwhile taken up just across from him, and as he looked about, Lee recognized that all the more vivid personalities had chosen this part of the bus. He could not have been more pleased. He turned to speak to Cecil, but then, suddenly, jumped back, startled to see that Gwen was coming with them after all.
“Hey!” he said. “You aren’t in the band.”
“Just shut up, okay?” Cecil said.
Stunned with admiration, Lee agreed to say no more.
They drove to the outskirts of town and proceeded down a narrow street lined on both sides with grocery stores, gas stations, and negro shacks with people sitting on the porches. They passed a church without windows, inside it a crowd of negroes singing hymns. It is true that most of the garbage cans were upright, though only by a thin majority. A dog (dog with mange) walked past, wearing a haughty expression. He would have cured that dog, Lee, had the dog been his, yea, and would have righted the garbage cans as well. Continuing with his observations, he saw a dead chicken rotting on a roof and then, next, a fat woman too drugged fully to lift her feet off the ground. However, so long as these people stayed within their own neighborhoods, Lee had no grudge against them.