by Tito Perdue
He had come all the way to school without stepping on a single crack. But when he rounded the corner and saw that it was too cold to loiter in the yard, he went inside and stood with the seventh-graders huddled about the furnace. They actually looked better than normal, the girls in their scarves and coats and cold-burnished cheeks. He wished that every one of them belonged to him alone. He went to Lois and nudged her, who turned and gave him a smile, the first good event of that particular day.
“Cold!” he said.
“Well, no wonder.”
“It’s not always cold.”
“But today it is. Silly.”
He had no answer for that. She had put on a bit of lipstick, or perhaps the residue of a chap stick to protect her from the weather. Her eyelashes were dense, the way he liked them, and numbered in the dozens. He didn’t expect much from her, however, and was excited when suddenly she bent closer and reported, “Naomi likes you.”
“What?”
“Naomi! She told me.”
Lee reeled. He had heard of this girl who at one time had been affiliated with Cecil.
“She did not.”
“She did! Okay, I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
“Why does she like me?”
The girl took him by the sleeve and drew him off a short distance.
“Because you’re funny.”
Lee grinned. There was some truth in that.
“You mean . . . ?
“Yes! And because Mr. Debardeleben is so mean to you.”
“Oh.” He drew her off a short distance further.
“She likes me a lot, or just a little bit?”
“I don’t know. A lot, I guess.”
Lee reeled. He had seen Naomi once or twice, here and there, and although he wouldn’t have ranked her among the top two-thirds of girls, yet he did have a particular appreciation for people who would say what she had. There arose then in his mind the problem of what he was expected to do in light of this development.
“Does she like me very, very much, or just . . .”
She never replied. The bell had sounded in mid-sentence, and the girl had run away. Climbing to his proper classroom, Lee handed off the sheets of homework to those as depended upon them and then hurried forward to the teacher’s desk to put her things in better order. He was so tired of seeing her fuddling with her papers, untidy piles always in peril of dropping to the floor. Today, Mattie Lou was wearing a sweater he hadn’t seen before, a bright red piece of apparel that sorted well with her. He questioned whether he should complement her on it, recollecting just in time that she was one of those who despised the sight of him. Cecil today was in a pair of boots that also Lee hadn’t seen before, an expensive looking set with silver chains that chimed with every move. Most of the others were in their usual gear—shoes, shirts, and the girl in back who had forgotten to take off her earmuffs.
She arrived, the teacher, and after blundering about for the desk, found it in its accustomed place. When it came to mathematics, she never called on the same person twice, a pattern that allowed a person a good deal of freedom once he had answered. Taking advantage of it, Lee arose slowly, left the room, and dashed for the boys’ room where, somehow, Cecil and two others had arrived there before him. He knew nothing about dice, Lee; he could, however, see that Cecil had put together a hoard of nickels and pennies that was higher by far than the average person’s there.
“Cecil?”
“Hm?”
“Who’s winning?”
Getting no answer, he went and, while trying to use the urinal at the far end, read the message inscribed in blue-green chalk:
Please do not throw your cigarette butts in the toilet. It makes them soggy and hard to light.
Having failed to urinate, he then stood back and surveyed the pornographic frieze that adorned one whole wall, a brilliantly conceived work drawn with much labor by someone who must have known about such things. Craig came in, but then turned and went out again when he saw the place was crowded. Once, just once, Lee would have liked to play poker or dice with these people so that later on he could look back upon it as a fulfillment of his promise to have tried all things before he died.
“Cecil?”
“Hm?”
“Can you lend me a dime?”
The boy didn’t answer at first.
“So I can play, too?”
“Hell, no.”
“How come!”
“’Cause. We don’t want you to go bad on us.”
“I’ve already gone!”
“Naw, you hadn’t.” He rolled the dice. “You can’t go bad till you’ve had a hundert licks.”
“I had twenty-five.”
“Look, I don’t care if you lie to other people, but now we’re talking about me. Anyway, shut up.”
He abandoned the place. The hall was long and dark and displayed dozens of framed portraits of some of the town’s old-time dignitaries, men in beards, many of them. Sometimes he thought he might encounter the girl who had kissed him on the bus, or on the lips rather, but in truth he wasn’t certain he would have recognized her in sunlight. Life was long and dark, and for all he knew the girl had moved on by now to another town and was kissing someone else. Forewarned by an incipient headache gathering force in the amygdala region of the brain, he could predict a two- or three-day spell of black depression heading his way.
Things were not much better when he returned to his desk and found a folded note waiting by his inkwell. It was seldom that he received such notes; indeed, this was just the second that had ever come his way. Putting on a bored expression, he slowly unfolded the thing, but then seemed to lose interest before half finished with it.
“Aren’t you even going to read it!” Sonya hissed at him.
Lee yawned. Winter it was, the weather bad, windows closed, and yet far away, he could still hear the same dog calling down from the encompassing hills.
“Hey, Lee!”
“Hm?” (It surprised and disappointed him that Charlie T. would actually come and sit at the same desk with him, a space almost too narrow for one person alone.)
“You stolt anything lately?”
“No. But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Lookie here.” He took out a brightly-colored fan of some nature and opened it, exposing a painting of a woman in a kimono.
“Whew.”
“You still going with that girl?”
“What girl?”
The boy thought about it but failed to come up with anyone. Lee waited for him to go away; instead he drew out an Almond Joy candy bar and took off the wrapper.
“Did you steal that one, too?”
“Well, hell, yeah, I stolt it! You don’t think I’m going to pay good money for things, do you?”
“No, no.”
“Shit, I’ll still be here stealing things while you’re off to colledge.”
Lee had to laugh. “I’ll never go to college.”
“The shit. What does your old man do?”
“He’s an engineer. Electrical.”
“Well, shit, he must have all kinds of money!”
There might be something in what the boy had said. “Yeah, but I’m not going to live long enough to be going to college.”
“How come?”
“Liver.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about that. I had a cousin that died.”
The world was full of cousins, many of them dead. Thinking forward to the moment, Lee tried to forestall the tears from gathering.
He waited until 12:17 to finish with the note, and by this time he was at his usual place in the Canteen with Cecil on one side, his Orange Drink on the other, and the Navy veteran called Travis sitting just across from them. The message, telling of how Naomi had become interested in him, was brief, and he was able to go through it repeatedly in no time at all.
“Okay, what does it say?”
Lee shrugged and put on a bored expression. “Some girl,” he said. “Clai
ms she likes me.”
“Which girl?”
“Shit,” said the veteran. “These girls aren’t even bleeding yet. Can’t see why y’all get so worked up about them.”
Lee could feel his gorge rising. There were at least a half-dozen high school girls in that place, and he doubted that a single day could go by without at least one of them bleeding.
“What girl?” Cecil asked again. He was smoking more frequently than herebefore, and had perforce developed a style of doing so in which one would not immediately perceive the cigarette itself, which he kept in darkness just below the level of the table.
“Naomi,” Lee said.
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Yeah, but . . . !”
“Calm down.”
“. . . she used to go with Willard!”
“That don’t matter. He didn’t do anything to her.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“When did she tell you?”
“Back when I was going with her.”
Lee groaned and put his head down. The music was playing “If,” a new song that already he ranked among his top four or five. And then, too, the lights had been turned down very low, giving prominence to a large but not very plentifully adorned Christmas tree standing just next to the jukebox. The mixture of those colors, blue, green, yellow, etcetera, had set up a mysterious ambiance of his favorite kind in which half a dozen couples were dancing in the dark. Looking forward, he could easily envision himself hanging around bars and taverns, a burnt-out case for the rest of his life. And that, of course, was when the school’s disciplinary proctor came and put his hand on Leland’s shoulder. Sometimes he wished he were more like Cecil, whom the authorities no longer bothered to monitor anymore.
“Sloan!” the man said. “Occurred to me you might be here. You have no idea how much we’ve been missing you over at the cafeteria.”
“I was just fixing to leave.”
“Well, let me help.”
Forfeiting his Orange Drink, Lee grabbed for his cheeseburger and managed to get it under control. He then let himself be pulled into the standing position and, amid the laughter, prodded toward the door. He had forgotten how bright the Sun could be, especially in holy season.
He looked tired, wan, gaunt, and more sepulchral than ever, Mr. Debardeleben did.
“What’cha reading these days?” he asked, once Lee had entered and taken up a seat on the red leather couch that formed the most luxurious furniture the room contained. “Or have you?”
“Aw, I’ve been reading about this guy who hunts crocodiles, and he . . .”
“We’ve already been through that, Lee. Many times! And you led me to believe that you would begin visiting our library more often. It’s a good library, Lee, full of all manner of stuff.”
He looked down. “Yes, sir.” He had thought about the library several times.
“Instead you prefer to collaborate with these people. I’ve spoken with your father—just thought you might want to know.”
“Yes, sir; I always want to know.”
“Lee, Lee, Lee. Aren’t there any attractive girls in your own neighborhood?”
“There’s two.”
The man was a melancholy type. Not without compassion, Lee watched as he strode to his cabinet and selected one of his lesser paddles, a narrow affair with not much more threat to it than if it had been an ordinary yardstick of the sort found in hardware and/or clothing stores. He looked for but could not identify the remains of the paddle that Clarence was said to have broken into parts. Going to the center of the room, Sloan now put himself into position and waited for the strokes, two of them, neither with any real force behind it. Putting on an agonized face, he came near to tumbling forward to the floor.
“Now Lee, I want you to keep away from that god-awful place, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or at least until next year.”
“Be dead by then.”
“You should be.” Suddenly he stepped forward to his bookcase and plucked out a thin volume in brown covers. Lee saw at once that he would have been able to read a book like that if he had to, as thin as it was.
“Read it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This fellow has the real lowdown. He knows, Lee, he knows what’s happening to our beautiful country. Not just Yankees, Lee; we got our own Southern capitulationists kowtowing to the Union rag.”
“I know it,” said Lee, consuming the last of the cheeseburger. “When did you tell him?”
“What?”
“My father.”
“Oh, I see him from time to time. But the main thing is, when are you going to start showing us what you can do?” (He didn’t know about the girl on the bus.)
“I’m going to start studying real hard.”
“May be too late. I don’t know, Lee, I look at you, and I see a person who . . .” (He waved his arm about in the air, as if trying to capture one of those December moths that like to get inside doorknobs and keep people awake at night.) “It’s a problem.”
They studied it together, the problem that had brought Lee to this place. The room was dark and deep, yet not so deep nor dark that they couldn’t both detect the sounds of 1950 (girls and motorcycles) leaching through the bricks.
Eight
He hurried straight home and got into the car, waiting for his parents to set out on this year’s tour of the town’s Christmas decorations. They were genteel people and mild, easily pleased, who worked hard and asked for little. Sitting just behind his father, he inspected the back of his head, or at any rate that part of it not hidden by his hat. His hair was twenty percent grey by now, and his nose, like those of all the family in the male line, was a salient thing, as big and blunt as a parsnip almost. One could not see his eyes of course, which remained all times deep within the shadows established by the brim of his brown felt hat. This man had had adventures—that much had been revealed in family discussions—but as to what those episodes had consisted in . . . Lee didn’t know.
Next, his mother, a dignified woman dressed in the clothes she used each year at this time for viewing Christmas decorations. She had descended from European royalty, one would have thought, instead of the Alabama mail carrier and part-time farmer who comprised Leland’s actual grandfather. Looking at her from the other side, Lee descried the uncontrollable shock of dense black hair she had passed to her elder son. Many other qualities she had gifted him as well, some good, some of neutral value, and one or two others as well.
Lee’s attention now turned to his brother, a pale quantity who loved to ride stretched out on that shelf between the back seat and rear window. Here the boy could sleep if need be, or scrutinize the night sky, or present an amusing sight to people in other cars. And then, too, he gloried in that hypnogogic state that brought perfect peace without at the same time entraining the disadvantages of death. He also carried an army canteen full of lemonade and liked to drink from it while in the prone position.
The dog came, too. Turning to look one another in the face, Lee was reminded that he never had and most likely never would be able to communicate with this creature across the man-dog divide that had led to so many misunderstandings in the past. Each thought the other insane. Bright lights and Christmas trees meant nothing to so rudimentary an animal, whose brain couldn’t have been even as large as its container.
They went direct to where the quality dwelled and drove past slowly, actually stopping in front of a two-story home with a brilliantly-illuminated tree set up on the balcony. The householder could have done even better than that, had he so wanted—he was Superintendent of Education for the entire county. Came next an array of little elves jumping up and down in front of the place where Milton Evans lived; here Leland’s father delayed for a long time, entranced with it, apparently. Two doors further there was a manger scene with three wise persons, one of them a negro or near it, peering into a rude-looking crib who
se contents could not be identified from the street.
There were other displays, all of them worth seeing. If he had his way, Leland, the city would be similarly lit up all through the year, either that or infested with garish manifestations of neon from evening to dawn.
The middle-class people had done almost as well, although sometimes one came upon places where last year’s display had been replicated without changes. At the corner of 10th and Highland they found a home with perhaps the paltriest wreath ever seen, a diseased-looking artifact hung crookedly at the door. Leland’s father stopped and looked at it for a long time, saying nothing. Lee was not surprised to see that some of the most wretched dwellings, mere trailers in some cases, had gone to the greatest lengths. (They were in a bad neighborhood now, and Leland’s father had no interest in slowing down.) Some of these people had actually collaborated to join their homes together in strings of light. It tended to confirm Lee’s old-time suspicion that poverty had its attractions.
Thus Lee and thus his family, and by 8:15 the inspection was over. Arriving back at home, he eschewed his second-favorite radio program and instead hurried into his best clothes. He might attend any number of dances during the course of a month, but none bore comparison with what took place December 23rd each year.
Looking neither to left nor yet to right, he ran to school in under six minutes and entered with a bored expression. His suit was blue, and there was a flower pinned to his lapel. Furthermore, the place was as dark as he liked, and although it wasn’t “My Foolish Heart” they were playing, the music was adequate, too. Right away he saw Cecil dancing with Gwen and doing it in such a way as that they looked like a single person of unnatural size. As to Charlie T., Lee had never seen him in a suit, or even normal clothes for that matter. He carried two bunches of flowers, one in each hand.