The family was so glad to have Charles alive, everyone acting as if he were a hero, when all he’d done was survive by some odd fluke—some pine tree growing two yards to the right of where the wind might have blown its seed. God’s plan? he wondered. What an ego to think he might discern it.
He would get through the funeral and feel better—rid of the nausea and fatigue, the breathing spells that would come on suddenly. He had awakened at night trying to catch his breath. Mary had heard him and thought it was the trauma of the crash. He had let her think that.
Big Abe had come by to see him, ringing the front doorbell, an ominous shadow through the curtained glass. He apologized for disturbing them as Mary led him into the bedroom. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, and if he had, it had been in the suit he was wearing now. He looked like Charles felt, forcing himself to keep believing what had happened. Big Abe slumped down in the chair Mary brought to the side of the bed, took off his hat, and patted strands of hair over his balding pate, the old face ruddy and used, his fingers kneading the brim of his hat, circling it round and round. “We have a history of this, you know.” And Charles didn’t know whether he meant being Jewish and persecuted or that his other son, Stanley, had died as a young man also. It didn’t matter.
“I’m sorry” was all he could think to say, and Abe nodded his head.
“Knew he would want me over here. He always thought the world of you, always thought I wanted him to be more like . . .” He paused there.
“His last moments, in his last moments he was thinking of you.” Charles hadn’t planned to say it; it just came out—years of placating, of keeping everyone balanced in the boat. He was going to tell Big Abe—just make it up as he went along—all about how Reuben had talked of Big Abe in his last moments, how Reuben had loved and respected his father, but Abe couldn’t hear it.
“We’ll talk later,” he said, breaking down right there in front of Charles, tears rolling down old gray cheeks. For the first time, Charles wondered about the nickname, Big Abe. He wasn’t big—broad shoulders and a big head, but not tall, rather squat, in fact. Charles watched him pull a damp handkerchief from his pocket.
“He would have wanted you to be a pallbearer.” He blew his nose and wiped it, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. “You aren’t in any condition . . . I’m listing you, you’ll sit with the family.”
Reuben’s funeral was huge. Mr. Ben and all Charles’s family were there. Much of the Methodist church of Bainbridge came, remembering their debt. Jews from all over north Alabama and Mississippi, from as far away as the Delta, had attended. Charles had never known there were so many in this part of the country.
He had taken great solace in seeing all his friends and family. It was what community and family were for, comfort in a time of trouble, stability in a time when there was no stability. He wondered what might have happened had he gotten up right there in the middle of the funeral and told them about that night—that Reuben was most likely dead before they were even airborne, that he had had the stuffing beat out of him by some bigot rednecks. How fearful Reuben must have been that night in the parking lot, while Charles could only berate him. “What a coward.”
“What? What did you say?” Mary whispered, and took his arm. She was sitting beside him. They were still at the funeral. Several people sitting around them turned to look at him.
“Are you all right? You’re perspiring.”
“Fine, fine.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. “Nothing.”
What if he got up right here at the funeral, confessed to everyone that he had practically thrown Reuben to the wolves?
He reasoned it would probably have been like his Sunday school teachings. He had taught adult Sunday school at Bainbridge First Methodist for years, too kindhearted to believe, as some did, in the hellfire and damnation part of God’s love. He always tried to emphasize the history. He talked about other monotheistic cultures that had developed during the time of Jesus. People were not offended. They thought he was comparing to underscore superiority. People believed what they wanted to believe—as he had.
Aunt Eugenia had left two days after they got back from Highlander, telling the others she was driving to Memphis to pick up Uncle Val at the airport. They would drive back across country together, taking a different route.
She told Tab and Tina that actually she was meeting some civil rights workers in Mississippi and donating the white jeep to them for their work. The workers, down from New York for the summer, would be driving her to the airport in Memphis. She would be back in California the next day. Feeling she had accomplished for them what she had wanted for herself in her early years, she was packing up to leave—satisfied for the moment. “But I’ll be back next summer. You can count on it.”
The girls sat on her bed in the upstairs room of their grandmother’s house.
“I remember sitting on that very bed, looking out this very window, like you’re doing right now, longing for something else, knowing I wanted something else.” She dropped the shirt she was folding into her suitcase and came over to sit on the bed with them. “Listen.” She took one of their hands in each of hers. “I know it didn’t turn out exactly as I planned. I’m sorry about that little unpleasantness with the plaque, but you do understand the greater significance, don’t you?”
They nodded their heads, not sure at all what they were supposed to understand, only sure that she had lifted them out of their place in the puzzle, that she had reshaped them just enough so that now they might never fit back in place.
When they first got back, Tab had rushed, almost in desperation, to find Mary Leigh and Harriett and go downtown shopping. Mary Leigh was trying out for cheerleader. So was Harriett. They said they had to have exactly the right clothes, the perfect lipstick. They wanted to talk about it incessantly. Tab tried to stir interest, but none was there. Mary Leigh had wanted to start out shopping for nail polish at Woolworth’s. It had gone downhill from there. After trips to all the dress shops on River Street, Tab had herded them to Trowbridge’s, sitting in the back, spending upward of fifty cents playing the old songs, trying to conjure the old self—but nothing.
Tina said she was tired of going steady with Jack. She had told him so, had given back his letter jacket. She had taken to her room, spending long hours reading library books.
They found themselves, of all things, ill at ease with anyone other than each other. They acknowledged this not by saying so but merely by being together all the time, having some vague idea of keeping alive what they had been through. They couldn’t seem to talk of anything else. They had even borrowed their mother’s car one day, saying they needed to go shopping at a place they had heard about near Huntsville. Tina driving, they had searched for hours, trying to find the little church in the gully. They had said it was because they wanted to thank the black man who had saved them that night. “We’re bound to see it, what with that weird old truck out front with all the crepe paper on it.”
“I don’t think it was out front. I think it was in the back and I think the minister said it was a church float, some kind of a float.”
“Way out here? Fat chance.”
“Let me just get out and ask at this house up here with the blue shutters. It won’t take but a minute,” Tab said.
Tina had pulled into the drive and was looking at her watch. “Hurry up. I got to get home and wash my hair. I have a date tonight.”
Tab had run up the steps to the bright blue door and knocked. As she stood there waiting and looking around at the neat coffee-can planters all in a row on the front porch, a breeze ruffled her hair and set the porch swing moving. She thought she heard music—a hymn, maybe, coming from somewhere far off. She knocked again, but the house was closed tight. Tina honked. Tab stepped off the porch and trotted back to the car. “I just feel like we’re so close.”
“We’ve been thinking that for three hours.” Tina backed out of the drive and headed for home.
CHAPTER 45
Trowbridge’s
THE AFTERNOON of the Labor Day parade, Tab and Tina had wandered downtown to eat at Trowbridge’s. It was packed. Half the school had stopped by to eat and drink before the parade began. Band members were roaming around in their uniforms, athletes in letter jackets. Cheerleaders, although not cheering, felt it a valid excuse to dress out.
The jukebox blinked in the corner. Tommy Edwards was singing. “And he’ll kiss your lips and caress your waiting fingertips and . . .” Steam rose off the hot dog cooker behind the counter. Lucille, the headwaitress, because she had been there the longest, was jerking up topping ladles, building five sundaes at a time, loading a tray to be held shoulder-high and distributed to tables and booths. The girls grabbed the first empty place. Lucille brought them a chicken salad sandwich, a chocolate malt, and a strawberry sundae. They sat talking quietly—at least they thought they were.
“You liked him, didn’t you—the black one?”
Tina was sucking on the last of the chocolate malt. “Gad, of course not. If you were to say that out loud in here, I’d never get another date.”
Leaning closer in, Tab said, “But you liked him, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“A lot?”
“I guess.” She churned the straw. “He was almost white, you know. He looked almost white.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“We would walk around to the other side of the lake at night.”
“And make out?”
“And talk—he was very interesting, you know. All the places he had been, was going. Okay, once, toward the end. I had been arguing with myself the whole time whether to or not. I knew he wanted to.” She fingered her straw, watching Tab. “If you ever tell that, I’ll be considered the town whore, making out with a black person. You know that, don’t you?”
“At first, I thought I hated Dominique, but guess what? I asked her if she wanted to spend the rest of the summer with me, here in Bainbridge.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No more than you, kissing a black person. It’s all the same.”
Tina looked over her straw and said nothing, sucking in the last of the malted milk. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” her favorite, was starting.
They had been talking for over an hour before they looked up and realized people were staring at them. There was still music on the jukebox, but the hum of voices had quieted. “We weren’t talking that loud—were we?” Tab whispered. “They couldn’t hear, could they?”
“I don’t think so.” Tina pasted a smile and flashed it.
Still, people were intermittently glancing their way. They had been watching and listening the whole time.
“And who cares if they did hear us?” Tab made a face out into the room and then began singing along with The Platters: “‘When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes . . .’ You’re not telling me to stop. ‘Theeey, asked me how I knew—’ What’s got into you?”
Tina sighed. “I guess I’m getting used to it. Besides, you’d have to go a long way to top that ridiculous brawl up at Highlander.”
Jack Carter, Tina’s former, left his booth and came over. He stood there, not sitting down, even as they invited him to.
“We wanna know . . .” he began. They looked past him to the others. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was winding down. “Everybody wants to know how you have the gall, especially you, Tina.”
“What?”
“Even my dad said everybody abided by the rules when he was young. You know better.”
“Whose rules?” Tab said. “Your rules? She can see who she wants.”
“Not in here she can’t.”
“Oh yes she can.”
“You keep out of it, little jerk.”
Tab glanced at Tina and grinned before she said, “Are you gonna make me? Just answer me that, Big Jack. You think you can make me?” She could hear Dominique in her voice. She had said it too loudly, but once she had let fly, it was easier to do it a second time. After a few times, she realized it almost came naturally. She wasn’t at all surprised at what she was about to do. “She can do what she wants to,” Tab said loudly, so the others would hear. “It’s none of your business and if you’re gonna call her a . . . a lady of the evening for doing it, then—” There wasn’t much left in the glass, mainly slivers of ice, but she did sling the slivers his way. She could hear Tina trying to stifle a laugh.
“Are you crazy?” Jack said. She had heard that before, but before, she had been the one saying it.
“Crazy? Crazy?” she said, crossing her eyes at him, making a face. “Maybe so.” She jumped out of her seat, stepped on it, and then up on their tabletop, towering above then—a different view now. The whole place was watching. Lucille had stopped in mid-soda jerk. Chubby Checker was beginning “The Twist.” “Now this,” she called to all of them, “is crazy.” She had hands on hips and began tap dancing, shuffle-ball-change, shuffle-ball-change, as in first-year tap, faster and faster. She added a spinning motion, twirling around on top of the table.
Tina grabbed her empty sundae glass from under frenzied feet and leaned back out of the way. She smiled at Jack. “A little something she learned over the summer.”
Tab’s glass and sandwich plate vibrated to the floor. Now Chubby was in full swing. “Come on baby. Let’s do the Twist . . .” She twisted along, finally ending it in a great flurry of hands and legs swirling through the air, penny loafers tapping madly on the table, everybody staring.
Lucille, jaded to everything Trowbridge’s had offered up over the years, put down her half-composed tray of sundaes, sighed, and walked over as Chubby was ending and Tab was taking a bow to a gawking audience. “Get on down off that table, honey. You’re gonna scratch the Formica.”
Breathless, Tab called out to them, “Now that’s crazy. Other things are not crazy. That is crazy!”
So then Jack said to Tina—because the rules said he should not converse with the younger crazy one—“I don’t know who she thinks she is, Doris Day or somebody, but even if she is your sister, junior highs do not come in here and sit in the same booth as senior highs. It’s the rule.”
Tina, openmouthed, put down her soda glass. “Oh, those rules. She looked up through sweaty legs to the limp ponytail towering above her and they both burst out laughing. “He meant those rules.”
And Lucille, hands on hips, “I told you—off the table, honey. You’ve acted the fool enough for one day.”
Tina slid out of the booth and held out her hand. “Come on, Doris, you’ve danced your way into everybody’s heart. Time to go.”
They walked the four blocks down River Street, jostling in and out of crowds, laughing as, intermittently, Tab did short versions of her tabletop dance. They were headed toward the river to meet the family, because always, from earliest memory, the family had watched the Labor Day parade, sitting on blankets and chairs spread out in front of the VFW, Tab perched on the barrel of the World War I cannon that stood in the middle of the lawn.
They could see all the family settled in chairs and on blankets, the children chasing around, their mother waving to them as they walked toward her, passing under American flags hanging on the lampposts that lined River Street, the dazzling sun in a cloudless sky giving a clear-eyed view of it all.
Their mother was holding out something as they approached. Down at the opposite end of the street, the Bainbridge High School Band was forming up to the cadence of the bass drummer, and the fire chief’s siren was beginning its whine up the scales. Her mother shouted above the din as she handed her the postcard. “Who in the world do you know in Paris, France?”
The Parade
ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, most people would have been down at the river on a day so hot as this one, but nobody was because of the Labor Day parade. Somehow over the years, this parade had become a big event in Bainbridge, bigger than the Christmas parade, much bigger than the one on the Fourth of July. Tab’s father had said it was becaus
e, for a long time, nobody much around here celebrated the Fourth of July, that kind of being a Yankee holiday. Now all that was changing. Now they had a Fourth of July parade, too, and it was getting bigger every year. Not as big as this one, but a nice size.
It was to start up at the far end of River Street and come straight through town, ending up down by the river. After that, everybody would go home to sit under fans or stay down at the river to swim.
Most of the family had gotten there early, taking up seats on blankets and chairs in front of the VFW hall that faced River Street. Soon, most of the neighborhood was there. Mary had walked down with the twins and Charles Junior. A little later, Charles drove up. The cast was off his leg now and the bandage on his forehead had been reduced to a square of gauze under a strip of adhesive tape. He still walked with a noticeable limp, using an old cane that he had found in the umbrella stand, probably his grandfather’s.
Uncle Tom and Aunt Helen had brought lawn chairs and spread them out around the grassy rise that was the front yard of the VFW. Several neighbors came over to Tab’s father and talked about Brad La Forte, saying what a shame it was, the plane going down and all. Her father had said they would never have a chance like that again. Tom had said, thank God they would never have a chance like that again, and tried to laugh when no one else would.
The police chief’s siren was heard, the high-pitched whine careening up and down the street, bouncing off buildings, then the thump of the bass drum. From her perch on the old World War I cannon, Tab put the postcard she had been studying—all in French—back in her pocket and waited for things to commence. She could look up the length of River Street and see parade marchers and floats gathered, waiting to be given a place in line as the parade fed out behind the ROTC honor guard carrying the American flag and the flag of Alabama.
After the honor guard, the police chief’s car, then the World War II veterans—men about her father’s age, sitting in the backseats of Ford convertibles and waving to all their friends. Uncle Tom and her father waved back, Tom shouting time-honored insults about their age or their shrinking uniforms. It got the thing off to a good start, especially since the school band came next. Music—patriotic music—always gave integrity to things. After that, the floats began, every kind imaginable, decked out in days of handmade effort. The themes were not so much tributes to laboring America as they were symbols of community. The Girl Scouts had one, advertising the cookie sale. The bank sponsored one full of kindergarten kids throwing out play money. The First Methodist Church had a scene from the Bible—children dressed like Romans and gladiators, the theme being: Be sure to come to MYF on Sunday nights. Interspersed with the floats were marching ROTC units from the high school, politicians running for election, fire trucks from the main station.
The Summer We Got Saved Page 33
