A Summer of Kings

by Han Nolan

  King-Roy leaned forward and set his elbows on the stone wall. He looked down and shook his head, and it looked like he was struggling with himself, trying to decide what to tell us. Then, he spoke. He spoke to the stones.

  "Last May, right at the beginning of the month, May third, we did this freedom march. Me and my friends, my sisters and brothers, all of us marched. Momma was scared for us. She told me to take hold of my little sister Syllia and my brother Joe-Earl's hands and to not let go. She said, 'If they haul one of you off to jail, they take y'all, but King-Roy, you hold on.'

  "I told her I would. Some of my friends had already marched and they were sitting in jail already, but I wasn't worried. None of us were. We all felt brave 'cause we knew we were doing what was right. That's what Dr. King said."

  "Dr. Martin Luther King Junior?" Pip asked.

  King-Roy nodded, still keeping his head low and looking at the stones.

  "Yeah, I've heard about him," Pip said.

  I said, "Go on," and Pip came over and joined us at the wall. We stood on either side of him and listened.

  "We'd gone to the mass meetings at the church, the Baptist church, and we sang freedom songs, and Dr. King talked to us and asked us if we were willing to fight for freedom, if we were willing to fight for what was right. If we were, then we should step forward and swear that if anything should happen to us, we would agree to turn the other cheek. We had to agree that we would be nonviolent, and if we couldn't agree to that, then he didn't want us to march. Well, me and my friends and sisters and brothers all agreed."

  King-Roy paused to blow his nose, taking a handkerchief out of his back pocket, then returning it before continuing with his story.

  "On the day of the march, we left the church chanting 'O Freedom,' real soft and quiet, and I was holding my little sister Syllia's hand and my brother Joe-Earl's hand, and we headed downtown with the crowd, but before we could get to the center, the police caught up to us, and they shouted at us to turn back around and go on home or they were going to turn some fire hoses on us."

  Pip said, "I read about that in the news," and he said it sweetly, like he was sorry for the way he had been acting. King-Roy kept talking.

  "I saw the firemen standing with the big hoses in their hands, and I saw some of the police had police dogs with them, on leashes, and other police had their clubs, and all of them had their guns, but I didn't feel scared, and we none of us turned around to go home."

  "Did you get sprayed?" I asked. "Did you get hit?"

  King-Roy nodded. "When we didn't leave, they turned on the hoses and it sprayed a group and knocked them down, and then I saw one of the firemen turn round and look straight at me, almost like he had been looking for me all along. He was standing there, standing up against a building, and I was in the street and I heard shouts all around us and rocks were flying through the air, but I didn't look to see who was throwing them because I was looking at this man." King-Roy lifted his head and stared out toward Pip's house. "I never saw such hate in my life," he said. "That man grinned like the devil, and then he turned his hose right on my sister and she was torn out of my hand with the blast of water and I thought my arm had gone with her, it was that strong. She went rolling down the street, and then that white devil turned his hose on my brother and he was torn from my other hand. I didn't see what happened to him because by then a dog was on me, tearing at the sleeve of my shirt. The dog ripped it clear off of my arm, and I looked up and I saw three white men with grins on their faces, watching me while that dog tore at the front of my pants, and that's when everything changed for me. That's when I knew the truth about people, the meanness that lives in their hearts." King-Roy straightened up and said, "Oh, I've seen ugly before, and I've seen cruelty, too, but when I looked in those faces, I saw the truth. We aren't born with goodness in our hearts the way they're always telling us in church. No, we're born mean and ugly, and if you want different, if you want to get to heaven, then you have to change your heart yourself."

  Pip looked up at King-Roy and asked, "So what happened to you? What about your sister and brother?"

  King-Roy blinked several times and said, "What happened? I'll tell you what happened. I ran. I ran away." King-Roy sniffed. "I ran away and some of my friends saw me run, and they called me a coward. They said I was afraid to go to jail."

  King-Roy's face was struggling against the tears that threatened to come spilling from his eyes. His mouth was all bunched up and trembling, and his eyes were blinking and blinking. "They called me a coward."

  I reached out and touched his hand, but he didn't feel me touch him. His mind was still far away.

  "I had made a promise to Dr. King and I kept it. I didn't fight. If I had-a stayed, if I didn't run, I would have broken my promise. Everything in me told me to fight. It's not right. It's not right what they did, and I couldn't just stand there and take it. I couldn't just stand there and let my brothers and sisters take it." King-Roy wiped his wet cheek with the back of his hand and sniffed. "I had to run away or fight back. I couldn't just stand there."

  "So, what about Syllia and Joe-Earl; were they okay?" I asked.

  "What?" King-Roy said, turning his head to look at me. "Syllia and Joe-Earl?" King-Roy lowered his head and drew his brows together as though he was trying to remember who Syllia and Joe-Earl were. Then he took a deep breath and let it out again. "I ... I was so angry I ... I left them behind." He shook his head and another tear fell on the stones. "All I could think about was that I gave my word to Dr. King, and the only way I could keep it was to run."

  "But you gave your word to your mother, too," I said. "What about that?"

  King-Roy nodded and glanced up at me, and I saw fear in his eyes. He looked away and nodded. "I know. I can't explain it. I can't explain what happened—how I felt. No one understood. Momma—Momma was so ashamed of me for leaving Syllia and Joe-Earl, and everyone else was on me about running away, and they said I was the only one who ran. Momma, my brothers and sisters, the whole school—everyone was ashamed of me."

  "But at least you all came out okay, right?" I asked.

  King-Roy twisted up his mouth. He looked down at the tiles, tapped the toe of his shoe on them, and said, "Yeah, everyone came home. Syllia and Joe-Earl came home." King-Roy said this with a catch in his voice, and when he glanced up at me, I saw that same frightened look in his eyes that had been there before. I didn't know what it meant, but it scared me to see it. I knew he wasn't telling us the whole story, but I couldn't bring myself to ask him anything else just then, so the three of us stood there, and we didn't say anything for a while. I watched King-Roy stare down at the tiles, tapping first one toe of his shoe, then the other. Then he said, with his voice so low I could barely hear him, "That was the worst day of my life."

  I nodded. "The day that changed your life, like you said to me yesterday, right?"

  King-Roy didn't answer me, but he didn't have to.

  Another question came to my mind, a question I thought I already knew the answer to, but I asked it, anyway. "King-Roy, what man were you accused of killing?"

  King-Roy looked at me a long second, then he said, "'What man'? You know what man. It was that devil with the hose. That white devil who tore my sister and brother right out of my hands." King-Roy turned the palms of his hands up and looked at them as though he could see Syllia and Joe-Earl's little hands resting on them.

  I stood facing him there in the pavilion. I stared at his face, saw the sadness I had seen there the day before, and I saw that it was an old deep-worn kind of sadness. I couldn't tell if he had killed that man with the hose or not, but I believed, at the very least, King-Roy knew who did.

  FOURTEEN

  King-Roy, Pip, and I didn't get to talk anymore because it was time for breakfast and Sophia had come out to get us. Pip stayed for breakfast, but afterward he said he was leaving. "You ignored me all through breakfast," he told me when we stood together on the porch and he was saying good-bye.

  "I d
id not," I said.

  "You did. You just stared at King-Roy the whole meal. I saw you."

  "I was just seeing if I could tell if he really hated us. He was so friendly and well-mannered at the table, I couldn't tell, could you? I just want him to like us, Pip. I want him to want to stay."

  Pip ran his fingers through his bangs, so they stood straight up, and said, "I don't know why. He could be violent. He could just snap again and kill the whole lot of you. How am I going to feel if I keep the you-know-what a secret and something happens to you?"

  "But it won't. I know it," I said.

  Frustrated, Pip rolled his head around on his neck. "You just said you couldn't even tell how he feels about all of you. He's probably a master at disguising his true feelings. You don't really know what he's liable to do. He could be a real cold-blooded killer, for all you know. He really could, Esther."

  I shook my head. "What he told us about that march, Pip, I can't get that out of my mind. He seems so ashamed of himself. Don't you feel sorry for him?"

  "I don't know," Pip said. "Maybe he was so ashamed and angry, he went and killed that fireman."

  I swatted Pip's shoulder. "Pip, you've got a one-track mind. All you can think about is that he might have killed somebody."

  "You'd better think about it, too, Esther, and you'd better not forget it. No telling what kind of dangerous this guy is." Pip jumped off the porch and turned around. "Oh, I left you something, up in your room."

  "Pip, you shouldn't have. What is it?"

  Pip must have seen something in my face, because he said, "Don't get all guilty feeling about it," which is how I was feeling. "It's just some cream rinse my mother bought for you. She said all the professionals use it, which you would know if you ever got your hair cut at a real salon instead of with me at the barber's."

  "They're willing to cut it dry, so it doesn't hurt so much when they comb it. I like the barber's, and Mother doesn't mind my going there as long as they don't make me look like a boy. But thanks for the cream rinse. I hope it works. Thanks, Pip."

  Pip just waved and headed off toward his house.

  After Pip left, I didn't get to spend any time with King-Roy because I had to go with my sister and brother to the country club for their swimming lessons and a day at the pool.

  That's the way it was all weekend long. I took care of my brother and sister and only saw King-Roy at mealtimes, when he wouldn't even look at me, but I was glad to see that at least he hadn't left yet. He hadn't gone to Harlem yet. I still couldn't get what he told us in the pavilion out of my mind. I wanted to do something for him. I wanted to make everything all right, make it so that it was okay that he ran away and left his brother and sister behind. I just wanted to make it right somehow, but I couldn't figure out how.

  Sunday night my mother called me to her bedroom to talk to me. Having a talk in my parents' bedroom was never good news, so I took my time dragging myself in to meet with my mother.

  "Esther, I called you in thirty minutes ago," my mother said when I finally showed up in her doorway. My parents had the neatest room. It was huge, of course, and it had a secret room hidden behind a wall of books, and a king-sized bed with big fat cherubs—ones you could almost pull out and hold in your hands—carved in mahogany, with fat twisting pillars for bedposts; and they had a pump organ in there that my father played sometimes. It had belonged to my father's mother, and we children weren't allowed to touch it. I looked all these things over as I stood in the doorway, waiting for my mother to get through her lecture on being on time and get down to the real reason she called me.

  "Esther, are you listening to me?"

  I turned from the organ and looked at my mother. "Not really, Mother, but I know what you were saying and it's not that I can't be on time, it's just, I didn't want to be. I know you're going to tell me something I don't want to hear."

  "I want you to look after Stewart and Sophia this week," my mother said.

  "See," I said. "Why? Why do I have to watch them all the time? Beatrice has nothing better to do than sleep half the day away; why don't you ask her to look after them?"

  "Beatrice has no patience with them, and I need you to take them to the city on Wednesday for another audition."

  "Me? Why can't you take them? I hate going on auditions, you know I do, Mother. All I do all day is sit around and watch bratty kids who can't act."

  Mother's eyes filled with tears. "Madeline is sick again. I want to go stay with her this week."

  Madeline was Mother's other best friend—her best New York friend—and Madeline had cancer.

  I rushed to my mother's side and put my arm around her. "I'm sorry, Mother. I'll watch them for you, and I'll take them into the city and everything. I'm sorry about Madeline. Tell her I hope she feels better."

  Mother pulled away from me. "Feels better? She's dying of cancer. She's never going to feel better, only worse."

  "Well," I said, "I hope she feels better, anyway. I can hope it, can't I?"

  So that's the way it was. All week I stayed busy with Sophia and Stewart and I hardly saw King-Roy and I didn't work on my play and Pip and I ran in the mornings, where most of the time we fought about King-Roy, and I wheeled Sophia around in a wheelbarrow and took her and Stewart to the gatehouse to help Auntie Pie with the animals, only they were no help at all. They squealed and hopped up and down when I brought any of the animals out for them to see. I took them swimming, and to Jack's to eat sandwiches and nickel pickles, and we went bike riding, to the movies, to the audition, to a matinee in the city, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Stewart stared at the Degas paintings and wouldn't leave the room where they were kept, and Sophia stared at the nude-male statues. By week's end I was exhausted and Sunday night came and I had another meeting with Mother and she said she needed me to watch Sophia and Stewart another week. I wanted to complain, but Mother looked a lot more tired than I felt, so I kept my mouth shut and hoped twice as hard that Madeline would get to feeling better soon.

  The only good thing about the second week, or so I thought at the time, was that on Friday, when I had to take Sophia and Stewart to yet another audition in the city, King-Roy said he wanted to come with us. He said he had earned himself a day off, and I knew that he had.

  While I had been taking care of my brother and sister, King-Roy had painted the laundry room white, fixed the 1947 Ford Super Deluxe station wagon, so it ran forward again, and chauffeured Auntie Pie around in it. He had caddied for my father when he played golf at the country club, listened to Beatrice practice her lines and fixed her hair dryer, so the plastic cap that went on her head was attached to the air hose the way it was supposed to be, followed Monsieur Vichy around with a pad and pencil in his hand and wrote down any great ideas Monsieur Vichy had—which meant writing down anything Monsieur Vichy said out loud—and taught Daisy, our housekeeper, how to make "real" banana pudding.

  The only time King-Roy and I had had a chance to really talk again was late one afternoon.

  King-Roy was working on the car and I stood watching him, hoping he'd notice how pretty my hair looked. Pip's cream rinse really worked. I twirled a section of my hair in my hand the way I saw my friend Laura do once when she was flirting with Jamie Solo, a junior in high school. King-Roy didn't even look up. When I said hi and asked him what he was doing, he said, "I don't want to talk to you right now, Esther."

  "Why not?" I asked.

  He glanced at me from under the hood of the car and said, "I shouldn't have told you what I did. I shouldn't have told you any of it."

  I said, "I think about it all the time, what you said. I wish I could make you feel better."

  "Well, you can't, so go away now." King-Roy unscrewed something under the hood.

  "Won't you teach me to tap, at least?" I asked.

  "No, and that's another thing I shouldn't have told you about. I talked too much," King-Roy said.

  I shrugged. "That happens a lot around here. People are always telling me thi
ngs they later wished they hadn't. They tell me things because I don't matter. Pip tells me things because I do. Which are you, King-Roy? Why did you tell me what you did?"

  King-Roy straightened up, pulled a rag out of his back pocket, and wiped his hands. "You matter, Esther. I told you because, I guess, well, it just came out. You—you're easy to talk to." King-Roy pushed his glasses up on his nose and said, "I guess it's because you're so open and you don't try to be something you're not."

  I let go of my hair and shook my head. "Oh, yes I do. That first day we met, I tried to be Katharine Hepburn."

  King-Roy chuckled. "Well, see, you're honest and you make mistakes and you make me feel okay."

  "I do? That's almost the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me." I leaned forward and gave King-Roy a big hug, and King-Roy quickly pushed me off of him.

  "Hey, you can't be doing that," he said, looking left and right. "You want to get me in trouble?" He picked up some kind of wrench tool and pointed with it and said, "You go on, now. Go on and leave me to work."

  "You smell like motor oil and soap," I said.

  "I said, go on," King-Roy said, hiding his head under the hood.

  By the time Friday and the train ride into the city came around, I was really excited about our trip, until I saw King-Roy come down with a filled grocery sack rolled up under his arm.

  "What you got in there?" I asked him.

  King-Roy grabbed the bag and held it with two hands as if he thought I was going to take it from him and said, "Never you mind."

  I looked at him, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. He started walking away from me, toward the kitchen, and I trotted after him.

  "Why 'never you mind'? What's in there?"

  "I'm not telling, and you just leave me alone about it, Esther."

  I stopped and said, "Aren't you coming with us to the audition today?"

  King-Roy turned around. "I told you I was going into the city with you, but I'm gon' spend the day with Ax, in Harlem."