After the meeting and before the rally, the men went to the local barbecue house for supper. Four carloads of them pulled off the highway and into the dirt lot that was the parking area for Bama Barbecue. Reuben, in his usual unwieldy way, had opened his door too quickly and banged it into the side of the pickup parked next to them. The two men in the pickup had glared at him and Reuben had apologized profusely—only making it worse.
Inside was a different matter. There was a festive air, the place full of friendly locals, some getting ready to go to the rally. It was warm and smoky. The smell of barbecue had long ago soaked into the walls and heavy wooden tables. A waitress took her towel and slapped crumbs out of the dark red vinyl booth before Charles and Reuben and two others of their party could sit down. Men with ice in their glasses periodically disappeared outside for refills stored in their pickups. Snatches of Eddie Arnold floated from the Wurlitzer in the corner.
There were four of them in the booth. Charles, Horace Ramps, and Jessie Camp, from over in Bullock County, ordered the sliced barbecue plate, iced tea, and pecan pie. Reuben ordered fries and an RC, meticulously dipping each fry in the mound of catsup he poured in the center of his plate.
Horace and Jessie directed most of their conversation to Charles. Reuben had been oblivious, hunched over his fries—intermittently smiling at Charles, injecting precise figures and campaign calculations into the conversation whenever they were fumbled over by the other three. His voice, without an accent, but with a high nasal tone, cut through the smoke and smell of barbecue.
They had all finished eating and were getting ready to leave when Charles went looking for Reuben, who had excused himself to go to the men’s room, but that had been some time ago. Charles searched every part of the restaurant and was about to tell the others he would catch up to them later, but just then Reuben came hurrying back in the front door. “Where have you been hiding? I’ve looked everywhere.”
“I went out to get in our car, and those men parked next to us were being insolent.”
“Reuben, you’re imagining things. We’re in a hurry here.” Charles had turned a deaf ear, embarrassed for Reuben, or maybe for himself.
They got to the rally site about the same time clouds rolled in over the hills lying off to the west. Fort Payne was in the center of a valley, bound by what passed for mountains in this part of Alabama. Charles felt the wind picking up. Stadium lights, set on telephone poles, cored paths down through the gathering darkness. Bunting rippled in the wind. Cars and trucks lined the grass parking area. Whole families had come for the speech making. In a rural county, a political rally was half social. Several local churches had set up food tables to earn extra income for their mission work. All manner of other candidates vying for county offices were wandering in among the crowd, using the gathering to pass out their campaign cards before Brad La Forte made his grand entrance. It was an acceptable practice for the sucking fish to feed off the whale.
Charles moved about in the press of people, passing out cards with “Brad La Forte for Governor” on one side and the Alabama and Auburn fall football schedules on the other. Reuben followed close behind, carrying extra cards, he said, in case anyone might run out. Charles tried to ignore him. At eight o’clock, as a few drops of rain could be felt, all the men in the candidate’s party walked to the stage—all except for Reuben. Charles could see him standing down by the ten-yard line, leaning against the steps that led up to the bleachers. The only set of bleachers was on the north side of the field, so the speaker’s platform faced it.
Charles was seated on the dais, trying to calculate the size of the crowd, half-listening to the speeches, when he saw the two men from the restaurant parking lot come up behind Reuben. They were younger than he remembered, probably in their mid-thirties, dressed as if they might work at a gas station: brown pants, heavy brown shirts. Reuben was standing with his coat over his arm and a small box of candidate cards in his hand when they appeared on either side of him, the tops of their shoulders even with the top of his head. He had begun fumbling in his coat for something and then dropped the nasal spray when he finally managed to get it out of his pocket. He reached down to pick it up. The men appeared to reach down to help him and then all three disappeared as Brad La Forte made a point to the crowd and it erupted in cheers. When the banners and balloons were back down in place, Charles couldn’t locate Reuben or the two men. Charles sat on the platform for another few minutes, scanning the crowd, trying to keep from being overcome by a rising sense of panic. When the next cheer went up and everyone on the platform stood to applaud, Charles stepped to the back and hopped off the stage. He circled around the crowds of people and, finding no sign of Reuben, went out to scan the parking area. He caught sight of something moving in a dark corner several yards away from the line of cars that would take the candidate and his entourage back out to the airstrip. As he was running toward them, one of the men was hitting Reuben hard in the gut. They both had their backs to Charles and were facing the large oak tree against which they had pinned him. When Charles yelled, the two men didn’t flinch, but just turned slowly and began to walk away.
“Hey.” His yelling hadn’t seemed to affect them. They were walking casually toward him. “What in the hell’s going on here?” They walked as if they had heard nothing of Charles yelling, as if he had known what they were doing all along. They brushed past him out into the parking lot.
Reuben’s legs gave way and he slid slowly down the tree trunk to a sitting position.
“Reuben, you okay?”
“Apparently . . .” He tried to smile. It turned to a grimace. “Some sort of welcoming committee.” He followed this with an attempt to laugh, but the effort was so painful, he stopped immediately and used his arms to brace his ribs.
“My God, Reuben, what happened?” Charles dropped to his knees beside him and at the same time called to the two Highway Patrolmen stationed by the candidate’s car, serving as escorts for the evening. “Those men. Get those . . .” By the time he pointed in their direction, the two were gone. Charles yelled as he stared at Reuben. “Can’t you see somebody’s hurt over here? Get the hell over here.” The officers began to jog toward Charles, holding in place thick leather belts laden with law and order.
“I’m fine, fine—just don’t touch me for a minute. Let me just rest here.” Charles helped him ease back down to a sitting position. “This is supposed to be your job, isn’t it? Where were you, damn it?”
The officers looked at him, nonplussed. “We was right here all along, guarding the candidate’s car,” one of them said. “Like we’re supposed to,” the other one added. “We didn’t see nothing.”
“Sir, you wanna swear out a warrant? We can do that if you’re willing to . . .”
“We should swear out a warrant, Reuben. Really, it’s what we should do.”
“Just get me out of here, back home.”
He yelled out in pain when Charles tried to help him. Just then, a roar went up from the stadium as the candidate made a point that particularly pleased the crowd. Charles glanced over his shoulder. The huge stadium lights were gathering swarms of night creatures flitting in and out of the beams. Cigarette smoke drifted up through the lights.
“Don’t. Don’t. Let me do it. I think they must have cracked some ribs.” Charles stood up and watched as Reuben made several futile attempts, but in the end Charles had to pick him up and carry him over to one of the patrol cars. He had the mass and weight of a child. “Is there a hospital close by?”
Reuben’s fingers gripped Charles’s shirt. “I don’t need a hospital.”
“Big one over at Turvey City,” the officer said. “Wanna go over there? Takes ’bout a hour.”
“An hour? Don’t you have something else closer, a local doctor that can take a look at him?”
“Doc Tram. He’s off fishing for the week. That’s alls I know of.”
“I’m feeling better now, honestly.” Reuben wet his lips and tried to speak distin
ctly to reassure Charles. “Have him take us to the plane. We can wait on the others at the plane.”
“All right, take us to the airfield, then.” He eased Reuben down in the backseat of the patrol car, then ran around and got in beside him. It had begun to sprinkle. The patrolman pulled out on the road and turned on the radio to look for the weather. The dial hummed past country and western, past good-time preachers and more static. The rain set up a tinny noise on the roof.
“What happened?” Charles whispered.
Reuben let his head rest against the backseat, eyes closed. “You know what happened.”
“No, damn it. I don’t know, Reuben. People just don’t hit for no reason.”
“That’s something you couldn’t imagine, could you, hitting for no reason? I heard what they said when they passed you. You heard it.”
“‘Jew boy’? Ignorant rednecks.”
“‘Faggot Jew boy’ was the exact phrasing.” Reuben’s eyes were still closed, his breathing labored; yet there was a half smile. “It’s easier not to see—isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t,” in a tone so abrupt it might have implied all this was Reuben’s fault.
The patrol car pulled onto the paved strip of asphalt that was the airport. It was raining harder now. The windows had fogged over. The officer got out and ran to the porch of the cinder-block building that served as the waiting room and Unicom station. He switched the porch light on, came back out, and opened the door on Reuben’s side—rain dripping in. The wind blew the patrolman’s raincoat, slapping it up against Reuben’s pants leg. “Nobody’s here to unlock the place. They’ll be along soon as the rally’s over.” He leaned down to look through to Charles. “Want me to carry him?”
“No. That’s all right. I can manage.” Charles stepped out in the rain and went around to Reuben’s side. The patrolman took off his plastic raincoat and held it over them as Charles managed to get hands behind Reuben’s back and under his legs and carry him, like some offering, up to the porch of the old building.
There was a sagging wooden swing at one end and a couple of worn cane-back chairs. “There,” Reuben said, gesturing. The chains clinked as Charles eased him down.
The patrolman shook out his raincoat. “Always too much drinking at these things. That’s why I don’t like ’em. Roads is gonna be full of crazy people tonight.”
Charles walked the patrolman back to the front of the porch. Thunder rumbled across the sky out over the landing strip. “When do you think you’ll be back with the others? We need to get going soon as we can.”
“Shouldn’t be no longer than half hour or so. Gully-washer like this’ll break up things at the high school for sure.” He handed his raincoat to Charles. “Maybe the little fellow can use this.”
He stepped off the porch. Charles watched his lights disappear down the rain-glazed road, then walked back to Reuben. “You doing okay?”
Reuben began to wheeze, trying to cough. He couldn’t inhale enough air. He tried to reach into his pocket for a handkerchief. Charles leaned over, got it, and handed it to him. Reuben coughed into the handkerchief and then gripped it in his fist.
“This whole thing is my fault. I practically forced you to come.”
There was that look on Reuben’s face—tired disdain—the same one Charles had seen each time they had, on rare occasions, seemed to come to a dead end in their talks and had actually played a game of chess through to the end, Reuben making precise killing moves—as close as he could come to anger—bringing the game to an abrupt end, with Charles at checkmate.
“You don’t have to worry, Charles. Long ago, I chose propriety over peace of mind.” He looked up at Charles, trying to find some good in the path he had chosen. “But being there in the restaurant tonight . . . I felt . . . I felt I contributed enormously. Didn’t you?”
And Charles nodded, only nodded. Of all the times in his life when he could have said more, he had only nodded. That would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Off in the distance, car lights bobbed up and down, coming through the rain and hitting every pothole as they came. Suddenly, four carloads of men were on the porch, stomping wet feet and congratulating each other on the event. The airport operator was unlocking the door to the building and flipping on lights; the door to the men’s room was slamming open and shut. The patrol car’s blue lights still flashed around in circles, hitting the building and then shooting out onto the airstrip to reflect against the plane, which was being pelted by rain. The sounds of the weather were completely drowned out by the triumph of a winning evening.
“Charles, we were saved by the bell.” Brad La Forte walked over to Charles and Reuben. “You should’ve seen it, fellows. The minute I finished my last sentence, the heavens opened up.”
“It was like word directly from above,” one of the other men said. “‘Verily I say unto you, vote for this man or there shall come forty days and forty night of storms.’” There were rounds of laughter and handshakes and congratulations as most of the others prepared to get back in the cars and leave.
The candidate took Charles aside. “One of the deputies said our treasurer had a little too much to drink. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He’ll be fine when we get him home.”
Brad raised a hand in Reuben’s direction and then drifted off to talk to his other supporters as they were leaving. The pilot went inside to get the latest weather report now that the Unicom operator was there. He came back out a few minutes later. “If we can get above this cloud cover, it’s smooth sailing.” He was saying this to Brad. Charles and Reuben would be the only other passengers in the Aero Commander.
“What do you think?” Brad asked the pilot. “I know everybody wants to get back tonight if at all possible. My boy has a baseball game tomorrow and I promised I would be there. Course, I’m not pushing you. The final decision is up to you.”
The pilot scanned the dark skies. “Tell you what. I’ll do my preflight and we’ll see what it looks like then.” He stepped out into the drizzle and walked over to the plane. Brad went inside to the men’s room. Charles walked over to Reuben and asked if he thought he could stand.
He didn’t open his eyes. “When the time comes.”
It had almost stopped raining when the pilot signaled to them to come on.
Brad stayed on the porch, talking to the Unicom operator, waiting for Charles and Reuben to load first. The Unicom man spat tobacco juice out off the porch. “Tell your man to be mindful of them winds around the mountains up there—comes in fits and starts. Course I know he knows that.”
Reuben was able to stand on his own, but he couldn’t walk. Charles grasped his belt and was as gentle as he could be, given the steps and the rain-slick asphalt.
The pilot was in his seat, dialing in his radios, by the time they got out to the plane. At one point, Reuben cried out when Charles pushed too hard, trying to heave Reuben up the narrow passageway. Reuben dropped his handkerchief and grabbed Charles’s arm. Finally settled, Charles fastened Reuben’s seat belt and then did the same for himself. The last thing he remembered saying to Reuben was, “We make a pair, don’t we?” Reuben hadn’t answered.
Brad climbed in the front seat. The pilot started his engines and turned on his taxi lights. Charles looked out through the rain-draped window to the tarmac and saw, in the flashing plane lights, the handkerchief Reuben had dropped. It was soaked in red. As they rolled past, blood was seeping out onto the asphalt in little rivulets.
Charles could feel the plane airborne and then suddenly, still moving forward, the tail began to shift from side to side, as if the pilot was stomping the rudder pedals. The engines were at full throttle, but they weren’t gaining altitude. Charles thought, This is what Reuben hates about flying, this turbulence. I’ll never hear the end of this. He looked over to Reuben, expecting to see “I told you so” in his eyes, but Reuben’s expression had not changed. He was sitting slumped over, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly ajar.
/> They were well off the ground and straightening out when the plane began to drop, sucked down, the propellers almost useless as they tried to cut through airflow that wasn’t there. He remembered being thrown about, not being able to control his arms or legs, even though he had his seat belt well fastened.
He was never able to tell if the last sound he heard was the right engine misfiring, or maybe that last sound had been the tops of pine trees scraping against the belly of the plane.
When Charles came to, he could feel raindrops splashing on his head, and he thought, since it was pitch-dark, that the wetness he felt on his face was rainwater. The cabin in front of them, what he could see of it, appeared twisted out of line with the rest of the plane. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, short circuits in the wiring spit out sparks, which gave off just enough light to see that the pilot no longer had a head. A large metal object, perhaps in the shape of a propeller, rested to the side of the pilot’s shoulder. He couldn’t see the candidate’s side of the cabin.
He remembered thinking how quiet it was, that they must be on one of the mountains that circled the airfield. He could hear sizzling noises—rain on hot metal—and cracking, popping sounds—wiring systems trying to reconnect with their home boards. Then the whooshing sound that comes when flame finds fuel. The wing out to his right caught on fire. He knew it held one of the gas tanks, and the surge of adrenaline, the sudden panic on top of panic, caused him to begin jerking at his seat belt. “Reuben, we gotta get out of here.” He could hear himself mumbling this and then repeating it louder—“We gotta get the hell out of here, out of here, come on”—because somewhere in the back of his mind he realized Reuben hadn’t called to him, hadn’t moved. He tried undoing the seat belt with his right hand, but it didn’t work. The hand didn’t hurt, it just didn’t respond to what he was trying to get it to do. He used his left hand, and the belt finally came free.
The Summer We Got Saved Page 28
