The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  The boy’s gloved fingers fumbled with the radio controls, bypassing Top 40, jazz, and urban contemporary, which was the PC marketing code for Black music. He settled on a country station she knew had been Lena’s favorite for years. Strains of guitar music filled the car, and when Midnight’s head swayed from side to side Ruth turned up the volume and he sang along with his eyes closed.

  “You know all the lyrics,” Ruth said.

  “Mommy loved Blake Shelton. She used to sing in the car all the time.” The glow from a streetlight passed over Midnight’s face, but it was blank, unreadable.

  “I heard about your mom and I’m so sorry.”

  “She’s been dead awhile. Died when I was seven.” Death lived in Midnight’s words, too. In the way he said them. No inflection in his tone. No sadness there, either. Ruth could only assume the more he said the words, the less they stung.

  “I can only imagine how much you miss her,” Ruth said.

  “I wonder what it’s like to be dead.” He turned his face to the run-down row houses passing outside his window. “Granny said nobody’s ever come back to tell us about it.”

  Snow fluttered in front of the car’s headlights like confetti. Ruth clutched the steering wheel, dividing her attention between keeping the car from swerving and looking at Midnight.

  “I still talk to her. And sometimes she talks back.” He glanced at Ruth, as if daring her to dispute this fact.

  “I talk to my papa, too. He was actually my grandfather and he died a long time ago, but I still miss him.”

  “Does he answer you back?”

  “Well, I don’t hear an actual voice. But when I have a problem I’m trying to solve and need to know what to do, I ask him. Then I get this overwhelming feeling that pushes me in the right direction, and I know that’s Papa. When I still lived here, I’d go to the Wabash River to feel better. That was our special place.”

  This was the first time Ruth had told anyone about her talks with Papa. At home, when Xavier turned the lights out, she would lie on her side of the bed in the dark, shadows moving across the ceiling and horns honking on the busy street below, and silently tell Papa everything.

  She swiped her cheek fast. Without looking at her, Midnight dropped his crumpled napkin on the console between them. It was brown, with the Dunkin’ Donuts logo on it, and she felt the roughness of the recycled paper as she dabbed her cheek with it, leaving sugar crumbs stuck to her face.

  Midnight said, “I go to the river sometimes with my friends.”

  Ruth cleared her throat. “Papa and I mostly fished there. You could look out as far as you could see and get lost in the water, the beauty of it, the stillness. Then you’d realize the river is bigger than any of your problems.”

  The kid didn’t say anything, so she kept talking. “You know, my grandfather and your grandfather used to work together. Fished together, too.”

  Midnight tilted his head up like he was considering what she’d said. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “I never met my grandpa. He was already dead when I was born. Granny said I got my appetite from him.”

  Then he yelled. “Right here. You missed it.” He twisted his upper body and pointed behind him. “My street. Kirkland. It was back there.”

  Visibility was poor and she’d passed her turn. Forgetting the black ice beneath them, she slammed the brakes and the car skidded in the intersection. “Damn.”

  “You said a bad word.” Midnight laughed louder than necessary.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard worse on TV.”

  He looked surprised that he hadn’t rattled her. The car churned the ice for a few seconds before turning around. The green house he pointed to seemed forlorn and sickly, with two rusted pickup trucks in the yard turning white in the snow. Lena’s house had never been this run-down back in the day, but as a kid, she didn’t have much to compare it with.

  “Is anyone home?” Ruth said.

  Midnight ignored her question and opened the car door to get out, but she stopped him. She took his phone from his hand, found his contact list, and typed in her name and phone number.

  “If you need a ride in the next few days, call me. Don’t walk these streets by yourself late at night.”

  He took his phone back and said nothing. He shut the door and trudged through the snow toward the house, then he stopped suddenly and ran back to her car. Had he forgotten something? She rolled down her window. A blast of snow rushed her face.

  With his eyes squinted and mouth twisted, Midnight held on to her door and said, “How long can a cockroach live with his head cut off?”

  The absurdity of the question itself and the fact that he ran back to her car to ask it stunned her into silence for a second. Then she said, “I don’t know, but I do know you’re going to freeze if you don’t get into that house.”

  “You don’t know the answer,” he said triumphantly, and grinned as he ran sideways pushing against the wind gust.

  A young woman with an angry face and pink hair rollers framing her head appeared in the doorway and yanked him by the arm. That had to be Gloria, Lena’s younger daughter, the one who got into enough trouble for Mama to predict she wouldn’t amount to much. With a quick glance back in Ruth’s direction, Midnight jerked free of his aunt’s grasp and the door closed, leaving Ruth to wonder about Midnight and what life was like for him in that sad little green house.

  Fourteen

  Midnight

  Corey’s house on Hill Top was a ranch-style bungalow with a front porch, and Midnight preferred it over the house he used to live in with Daddy. It reminded him of the midday sun, bright yellow with white shutters and flowered curtains at the kitchen window. Sometimes, he pretended his mom was inside making heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast before school in the mornings and singing Blake Shelton songs while Daddy worked in the yard. Now, Mom’s face dissolved into that of Miss Ruth. Every time he looked at her name and the number that she’d stored in his phone last night, a rush of warmth flooded his body and he caught himself smiling.

  At the side of the driveway, Mr. Cunningham bent at the waist, digging his shovel in the ground and lifting snow off the walkway. Mr. Cunningham was a short, solid guy with dark skin and rounded shoulders whose brow always seemed folded like a paper airplane. Even though he’d shaved his head bald, you could still see the shadow outline of hair on both sides. Sebastian said the Cunninghams were older than most kids’ parents, and that’s why Mr. Cunningham had gone bald already.

  “Think fast.” Pancho whipped a football toward Midnight, whose knees plunged into the snow, trying to catch it with his left hand, his other arm practically useless. He missed.

  “I wasn’t ready, dork.” Midnight pawed the snow with his gloved hands, the uneven terrain of the snow working against him, making it tough to find equilibrium. Then he muttered under his breath, not sure if he wanted Pancho to hear him or not, “Plus, the trajectory of the ball was all off.”

  “You catch like a girl.” Pancho must have heard him.

  “Yeah, a baby girl, bebita,” Sebastian took birdlike steps with his chest poked out. He was half Black, half Puerto Rican, basically a light-skinned Black boy with curly hair until he opened his mouth and the words came fast from the back of his throat, his r’s rolling.

  Midnight’s bum arm made him the butt of jokes sometimes. His whole body burning with humiliation, he said, “Shut up, you spic. Just shut up.” He’d heard Daddy call some of the Hispanic guys from the plant that name behind their backs, and he’d sneered when he said it.

  Sebastian’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. He obviously knew the word. Corey even stiffened but stayed quiet. After hesitating a second, Sebastian said, “Your mama,” picking at Midnight’s deepest wound. He pointed at Midnight with one hand and held his belly with the other, falling back in the snow, forcing laughter. “Your mama’s so stupid she took a spoon to the Super Bowl.”

  Sebastian’s giggles trailed off and everything went
quiet.

  “Leave him alone,” Corey said, scooping the ball, tossing it away from his body, and then getting under it for a smooth catch. Midnight called Corey his best friend, but at times he didn’t know for sure how he felt about him. Corey dominated Little League, and Midnight could never even make the team. Whatever it was, that uncertainty circled Midnight’s head sometimes like a gnat that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times he swatted at it.

  “I can take care of myself.” Midnight knocked the ball from his hands.

  “What’s wrong with you? You better quit trippin’.” Corey elbowed Midnight’s ribs.

  Whether he asked for his protection or not, Corey had always given it. Somehow, that made Midnight feel weaker. He knew Corey thought he owed him something after what happened the summer after third grade, when they became friends.

  Nobody knew who or what started the fight that day in the open land off Sheldale Road. You could say the fight found them. Usually, you could blame it on the heat, nothing better to do, or maybe a sugar rush from too many Starbursts. But this one felt different from the start.

  It was hot and all the boys—too many to count—ran around with no shirts on, the sun blazing on their backs. Mom had died the year before and Daddy had closed himself off, so Midnight spent more time wandering on his own looking for something to get into. Running from his rage. Or maybe running to it.

  In the open field just outside Pratt that was soon to be a gravel pit, boys hurled rocks at each other, a stream of pebbles spitting dust clouds in the air. One boy stood out, with a strong arm and determined look. The maroon splotch on his cheek stayed there even when he rubbed it with the back of his hand. Like war paint. He had perfect aim. Recognizing him from school, Midnight knew he was smart and popular and that his name was Corey, but they’d been in different classrooms that school year.

  It didn’t take long to see that a couple of boys were aiming for Corey. Spotting a jagged rock in a pile of gravel, Midnight squatted to pick it up and hurled it at the boys going after him. Evening things out. Making it a fair fight. He imagined Daddy smiling, proud of him for the first time in a long while. Patting him on the back for being a fighter.

  A brief look of shock crossed Corey’s face when Midnight began helping him. They fought the enemy side by side. The other boys were bigger and older, their red-hot faces twisted in anger as they lobbed rocks at Corey and Midnight. Midnight laughed every time he and Corey put the right spin on a rock and it hit one of those jerks in the mouth.

  “Go back where you came from,” a husky boy with a bruised, bloody jaw shouted. His brown hair spiked like blades of grass.

  “Make me,” Midnight shouted, unsure where he was supposed to go, adrenaline jittering in his veins.

  “Nobody was talking to you,” the boy said, making it clear his command had been for Corey.

  “So?” Midnight said.

  “So shut your mouth.”

  Another kid piped up, pointing at Corey. “Yeah, go back to Africa.”

  One of the seven continents, Midnight recalled from social studies class, but he didn’t know much else about it. Corey was from Indiana, not Africa, so none of it made sense. But the air had a charge to it and nothing needed to make sense.

  Other boys crowded around them then, waiting, eager to see if the fight would take a more interesting turn. Soon, the commotion got the attention of the whole neighborhood. Scruffy-faced grown men in wifebeaters showed up swinging baseball bats, vowing to defend their kids. Women waved their arms and screamed. Then, out of nowhere, a gunshot blasted the air. Midnight whipped around to see who’d fired the shot. A tall Black man stood a few feet away, a gun pointing to the sky.

  “You leave that kid the hell alone, or I swear—” the man said, a crazed look in his eyes. Everybody scattered like roaches, not waiting for him to finish his sentence or make good on his threat.

  Corey stood frozen, looking up at his defender, as scared as anyone. Then a switch must have flipped inside him, because he dropped the rocks he’d been holding and started running.

  “This isn’t over,” one of the older white boys yelled.

  Once Midnight caught up to Corey and they’d put a few blocks between them and the open field, he said, “That guy with the gun was kind of nuts, huh? You know him?”

  Corey shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

  “Did you see all the blood on that kid’s face?” Midnight said.

  “Yeah.” Corey slung his T-shirt around his neck and looked at the dusty insides of his hands like they weren’t his own. “I didn’t mean to make him bleed like that. He and those other boys just kept saying stuff and then they started throwing rocks at us. I just hope I don’t get in trouble with my mom and dad.”

  Midnight shrugged. “But it was fun, right?”

  “I guess. Well, I need to head home,” Corey said, vigorously wiping his hands on his jeans.

  Wiggling his toes in his sandals, Midnight felt restless, energized by the fight, not ready for the day to end. “It’s not that late.”

  “I still have to go.”

  “Okay.”

  He watched Corey walk down the street and disappear behind a storefront.

  Midnight ran home to tell his father about how the fight had gone down and the rocks he’d thrown at the biggest boy out there. He left out the part about the gunshot, in case Daddy used that as a reason to dole out punishment instead of praise.

  “You did, huh?” Daddy slouched in his chair, his eyes on the TV.

  “Yeah. It was a huge deal. You should’ve seen everybody there. I found this rock that was sharp on the edges and I threw it as hard as I could. Just at the right angle to hit his face.” His words came fast.

  Daddy glanced away from the flicker of the TV screen to take in Midnight’s mussed hair, the spots of dirt on his face. “How does the other kid look?”

  “Bloody. Really bloody. You should’ve seen it. Blood coming out of his nose and mouth. I think his eyes, too.” As he talked, the story grew.

  Daddy’s lips twitched, as close to a smile as he got these days. “That’s my boy. Way to give ’em hell, Patrick.”

  Midnight’s heart grew to three times its normal size, and he thought it might burst.

  Now, on the front lawn of Corey’s house, just like that summer years ago, they were hopped up on adrenaline, this time with hurt feelings, too, their blood racing. Nobody wanted to be weak or to even be called weak. As if reading each other’s minds, Corey and Midnight lunged at Sebastian like synchronized fighters and pounded him with kicks and punches. Not to be left out, Pancho jumped in, throwing blows at anyone in close range. Midnight pulled hoods, stuck his fingers in mouths and up noses, kicking at legs and backs and faces.

  “Enough. Cut that out.” The booming voice above them belonged to Mr. Cunningham. When he stabbed the snow with his shovel, the boys flew apart like bits of debris after an explosion.

  “What the hell’s going on here?”

  The boys looked down at the snow, at their hands and feet, anywhere but at each other or Mr. Cunningham. When their bodies finally sighed like factory machines at the end of a shift, the only sound was their heavy breathing.

  “Sorry, Daddy. We were just fighting over a stupid girl. That’s all,” Corey lied, not looking at his father.

  “Son, girls aren’t stupid. Don’t let me hear you say that again.” Mr. Cunningham’s eyes scanned all of them. “And next time, remember that real men settle disputes with their words, not their fists.”

  By this time Mrs. Cunningham stood on the porch in a brown wool coat wrapped tightly around her with the hem of her white flannel nightgown hanging below it. Everything about her seemed simple, like she’d walked out of the pages of their social studies lesson on the Pilgrims, except she didn’t wear the white collars and cuffs or cover her hair with a bonnet. She looked the part of a librarian, which made sense since she worked part-time at the library. She looked as if she wanted to say something but thought b
etter of it.

  “It’s all right, Verna. They’re just being boys.” Mr. Cunningham gave them a sharp look that telegraphed, This better be the end of the fight.

  Soon, the boys huddled side by side on the porch, sipping cocoa with whipped cream floating on top. They were eleven now, too old for sleepovers, but the cream reminded Midnight of one time he stayed over at Corey’s house and Mr. Cunningham let them lather their faces in shaving cream while he taught them the proper way to shave.

  Just as he always did, he asked each of the boys, “Are you saving your allowance money?”

  Midnight nodded and said yes like always, not wanting him to know he didn’t get an allowance anymore now that Daddy wasn’t working. Mr. Cunningham patted his head and said he was glad to hear it, that he was proud of him for developing a savings habit early.

  He had a fancy title, vice president or something like that, approving loans at the Heritage Bank, so he appeared in pictures in the Ganton Beacon, cutting ribbons and presenting big checks to people.

  Somewhere far off a car moaned trying to push its way through the ice. The tree limbs shook, skinny and naked, trembling under the wind. When the Cunninghams went back in the house, Corey grabbed a handful of snow and packed it between his hands.

  “I want it to always be winter with snow every day,” Corey said.

  “How come?” Pancho said.

  “I don’t know. It’s fun to play in,” Corey said.

  “It never snows down south in Loos-i-ana, though,” Sebastian said, glancing at Midnight, stirring waters that were just beginning to settle after the storm.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Midnight said.

  “I don’t know. I heard stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  A neighbor’s snowblower sputtered in the distance.

  Pancho snapped his head back and forth between the boys as if he were watching a prizefight.

  “You’re always starting something. Geez.” Corey pulled his arm back and threw his snowball, watching it land with a thick thud in the hedges.