“Hold on, Porsche.” My father stopped his movie. “I want to meet these people.”
“Daddy, no. You can’t! Daddy—”
Too late. A moment later, he was out the front door, red-faced Portia trailing behind him. They nearly collided with Jack, who sidestepped them on his way up the walk. He came through the screen door and gave me a hug. “Your sister looks as if she’s about to face a firing squad,” he joked.
“First kinda-sorta date,” I explained.
“You remember yours?”
“Sure. When I was six, we took a school trip to the Bronx Zoo. I told David Levine that if he didn’t hold my hand, I’d beat him up. Does that count?”
“Absolutely.” Jack saw the transcript pages strewn across the coffee table. “So, how’s the writing going?”
Dangerous question. If anything should have been the catalyst for me to write a decent play, it was my interviews with Ron Bingham and Malik El Baz. I was certainly following Marcus’s decree that you can’t write what you don’t know. Well, now I knew a lot. That very morning, I’d tried again. Nothing. Portia could have written a better play. I didn’t know why I was stuck. And I didn’t want to admit it, not even to Jack.
“Slow,” I said evasively.
“When can I read it?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Well, when you’re ready, Miss Bright is ready,” Jack reminded me.
Maybe it was because the school was buzzing about the upcoming vote that Nikki had casually mentioned in drama class that I was working on a play about the flag furor. I’d expected Miss Bright to react badly. Instead, she’d asked me its title. When I said Black and White and Redford All Over, there were appreciative murmurs. It must have impressed Miss Bright, too, because she said she thought it was wonderful that both of our plays were “timely and relevant.” Then Savy Leeman suggested that when I had a draft done, the class should do a reading. Miss Bright agreed. I’d feigned great enthusiasm while knowing that at the rate I was going, I’d be ready for that reading sometime in the next millennium.
Jack thumbed through my transcript of Bingham’s interview. “This guy is a piece of work.”
“No kidding. Scary that he thinks, deep down, you’re one of his boys.”
“I know.”
I fiddled with the back on an earring. “Jack, no one in your family was ever … ?”
“In the Klan?” He looked up, and I nodded. “My father wasn’t. My grandfather wasn’t. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
How could he say that so casually? Redford ancestors could have been running around in white sheets; Jack didn’t know. Worse, he didn’t seem to care.
“Don’t you think—” I began.
“What I think is that both of us think too much.” He put the transcript back on the table and playfully pulled me to my feet. “Come on. You are about to be initiated into a top-secret, Redford tradition known only to the few, the proud, and the desperate to win the Franklin West game.”
He looked so cute. And he was right; I needed a break. “Okay. You talked me into it. I am in your hands.”
“Really? Well, that could make life very interesting.”
His lips were inches from mine when my father came inside, his shoulders drooping. “It’s official. I’ve lost my youngest daughter to preteendom.” He trudged back to the Barca and sank into the Naugahyde. “It’s all downhill from here. Don’t mind me. I’ll just watch my movie and dream of being Mel Gibson while my arteries harden. Have fun at the game.”
A half hour later, the high beams of Jack’s Jeep cut the darkness like twin light swords as we bumped along a gravel path. From my house, he’d driven back toward Red-ford House. Then, instead of taking the private drive to the front gate, he’d turned onto this country lane.
“So where does this top-secret thing take place?” I asked Jack after a nasty jolt pitched me against him.
“You’ll see.”
“Is all this your property?”
“For better or worse, in the family since 1852.” He gripped the vibrating steering wheel as the lane wound to the right. High corn on both sides of us gave way to woods. Finally, we came to a small clearing. Jack pulled alongside a parked Volvo and turned off the engine.
“This is it,” he announced as the gloom of night swallowed us. He reached into the back, found two flashlights, and handed one to me.
I flicked it on and aimed the light upward from my chin. “No one returns from the Cult of the Sacrificial Volvo,” I intoned, adding my best “Mwa-ah-ah!” vampire laugh.
He winced. “You’re right. You really can’t act.”
“Thanks!” I swatted his butt as we got out of the car. But no amount of prodding on my part would get him to explain where we were or what we were doing. He aimed his flashlight and led the way along a narrow path through the woods. Finally, we emerged in another clearing, smaller than the first one. I swung my flashlight around to find that we were standing on neatly trimmed grass edged by tall rhododendrons. In a corner of the clearing, I saw a square granite building. We trained our lights on its solid brass door.
“What is it?” I asked as we got close.
Suddenly there was a terrible wail from inside whatever the building was, and two spectral zombies leaped out at us, arms flailing. I screamed, jumped backward, and fell on my ass.
That’s when I heard a girl’s gleeful voice. “Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!”
I propped myself up on my elbows, pretty sure I recognized it. “Tisha?”
“Welcome to the crypt of the living dead!” she hooted. She, Terry, and my boyfriend all stood over me, laughing.
“You scared the crap out of me!”
“Tell you what, I’d pay to see that again on videotape,” Jack said, extending a hand to hoist me up while Terry retrieved my flashlight for me.
“Very funny.” I brushed myself off and shined my beam again at the stone building. “Is that thing really a crypt?”
Jack put his hand solemnly on his heart. “Final resting place for generation upon generation of the Redford dearly departed.”
A chill chased up my spine. “You mean this is your family’s mausoleum?”
Tisha linked arms with him playfully. “Also the official site of The Ritual, wherein we invoke the spirits of rebels past to bring good fortune to Rebels present.”
Jack gestured toward the open door and looked at me. “Madam?”
I held back, my voice low. “Your dad is buried here.”
“My dad was Redford High’s starting quarterback,” Jack said, smiling. “Believe me, he’s into it.”
A Coleman lantern illuminated a blanket and picnic basket on a bare marble floor. Everyone plopped down on the blanket, so I did, too. Terry took foil-wrapped paper plates from the picnic basket and handed them around. I peeked under the foil. There was a big pinkish thing, little fried-looking things and a pile of light brown curly things. Ick. “I don’t think this restaurant is in the Michelin guide,” I said.
“No dissing the cuisine, Jersey,” Terry warned. “Now, listen up.” He pointed to items on the plate. “You got your salt-cured country ham, your pork rinds, and your week-old hush puppies—fried corn bread they throw to the hounds to shut ′em up.”
“Maybe we could just summon some hungry dogs,” I suggested hopefully.
“No way,” Tisha said. “We’ve eaten this same noxious pregame meal before the Franklin home game for the last three years. And we won ′em all.”
“Coincidence?” Jack asked, wriggling his eyebrows. “I think not.”
“You don’t mess with tradition,” Terry declared, crunching into a pork rind.
“Eat up,” Jack told me cheerfully, popping a piece of country ham into my mouth. It tasted like a salt lick. “The football gods don’t like leftovers.”
They insisted that I eat everything on my plate. Somehow, I did, which earned me a round of applause. We were joking and laughing, and I realized that for the first time, I was actually having fun with Jack
’s friends.
Tisha took a small flask from her pocket. “And now, the official Tennessee moonshine invocation.” She swigged and passed the flask to Terry, who did the same and gave it to me. I took a sip—and choked, much to their amusement, but that stuff is strong—then handed it to Jack, who rose, flask in hand.
“Dear Lord,” he began. “We four unworthy sinners humbly invoke the spirit of Rebels past. We ask that You guide many touchdown passes into the arms of our brother Chaz and light the way for the Redford Rebels to victory against the godless Franklin West Warriors. Can I get an amen?”
“Amen!” we chorused.
Jack emptied the flask onto the floor. “The ghosts are now officially sated,” he declared.
“Good,” Tisha said. “Because the stone under here is so cold that my ass is numb. You wanna come warm it up, big guy?”
Terry was more than willing. “We’ll catch up with y’all at the game. Go Rebels!” With a rousing Rebel yell, they ran out the door.
I leaned my head on Jack’s lap. “I’m having fun. In a sick kind of way. Why aren’t your other friends here?”
“We used to have a few more people. But now Chaz is a starter on the team, so he can’t be here—”
“And Sara’s probably been a cheerleader since she could swing a pom-pom,” I guessed, then looked around. “This place really doesn’t creep you out?”
He stroked my hair. “Used to. Remember I told you about that time Chaz and I ditched school to go fishing?”
“And you had to apologize to, like, everyone in town?”
“Right,” he laughed. “My mother said I’d ‘besmirched the family name.’ She also made me come out here and clear brush for the entire weekend. Then I had to copy the name and date of every set of bones in this crypt onto a family tree. She checked it for accuracy, too.”
“She couldn’t just ground you?”
He chuckled. “Not Sally Redford’s style. At first I was sure some ghoul would rise up and smite me for my wicked ways. When that didn’t happen, I started to like being out here. After that, I came on my own every now and then.”
“Why?”
“To daydream. I spent one entire year imagining I was Superman. Then I changed to Spider-Man.”
“Cooler outfit.” I sat up and looked around. The walls were lined with coffins slid into granite slots, one atop another, like some kind of macabre filing system. A brass plate on the end sticking out gave names, dates, and epitaphs.
“Where’s your dad buried?” I asked him.
He cocked his head toward the vault closest to the door.
“Every male descendant of Eustis Redford rests here.”
That’s when I noticed the empty slot above his father. For him.
I tried to keep my tone light. “You will spend nine or ten decades as America’s finest actor and die in your sleep at the age of one hundred and ten.”
“What if that’s not the right thing, Kate?” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “All of them, every single one, served. You think they’d tell me, ‘You want to be an actor? Go on then, son. Be whoever you want to be.’”
Jack steered the Jeep back the way we’d come. But at a fork in the lane, he veered left. “Detour. You mind?”
“We’ll miss the kickoff.”
“This is more important.”
What could be more important to him than football? We bumped down what looked like a cart path overgrown with weeds. Finally, the headlights illuminated a tumbledown cabin nestled in the woods. Next to it were the exposed foundations of some other small structures. Jack’s headlights beamed at the cabin.
“Where are we?” I asked. But suddenly, like a fist to the gut, I knew. It was just as Mrs. Augustus had told me. “It’s slave quarters.”
He nodded. “Most rich Southerners had slaves. At the start of the Civil War, there were as many black slaves in this county as there were free whites.”
“Unreal.”
“That time my mother made me write down the names in the mausoleum? She had me copy them into the back of the family Bible. The names of Major General Redford’s slaves are listed there. All forty-two of them.”
He kept his car lights on so we could see, and we went into the cabin. It was empty. I wondered who had lived there, who had suffered or died there. “Your mother should tear this down, Jack.”
“My great-granddaddy did, the others. But not this one.”
“Why?”
“Tearing it down wouldn’t change what happened.” He ran a finger along the rough-hewn logs that formed the cabin walls. “I never brought anyone here, Kate. Until now. Not even Sara.”
“Why?”
“Too close to the bone, maybe. Besides, her family has its own skeletons rattling around in the battlefield cemetery. But with you…” He puffed out some air and ran his hand through his hair. “People throw around the words ‘I love you’ until they don’t mean anything. I never said it to anyone until I said it to you. But what I feel is bigger than… It’s like the words can’t even hold it all.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Me too,” I whispered.
“So I want you to know, Kate. Everything.”
I nodded.
“All my dreaming … wanting to be an actor … someone I’m not… maybe it’s just fear that I can’t measure up.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m ashamed that my ancestors owned slaves. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still proud of them, because I am. They were honorable men, for a different time. And they put love of country ahead of whatever they wanted for themselves. Can you understand that? Can you?”
This was where Jack came from, where turning away from service was like turning your back on the family faith. I got the unspoken message: If I couldn’t accept that, then I couldn’t really accept him.
15
R-E-B-E-L
THAT’S THE REDFORD REBEL YELL!
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
THAT’S THE REDFORD REBEL CRY!
three touchdowns. Chaz’s house was packed for the victory party, and the spirit was infectious. A boy standing on the living room couch led us in a cheer so loud they must have heard it back in Englecliff. I shouted along with everyone else, figuring what’s the harm? After all, the way JUST SAY NO buttons were outnumbering battle flags, it looked like Redford High School would soon have a new team name and emblem. Besides, football was a unifying force. All the black players were at the party with their girlfriends, and they were bellowing along with everyone else.
Sara was there. She ignored me. But Jack’s other friends were coming around. Tisha enlisted my help with a drunken girl, hysterical over a fight with her boyfriend. After the girl cried herself out, we found her a ride home. Even Chaz made an effort. After I congratulated him on the touchdown pass he’d caught and made reference to how it must have been divinely inspired, he told me that if I made “his boy Jackson” happy, by God, he was happy for both of us. Then, to Jack’s delight, he swallowed me up in a bear hug.
Clearly, Chaz was starting to accept me. I thought maybe I should interview him for my play. I’d done a half dozen more interviews. Meanwhile, the local media began to cover the upcoming vote. Waiting for the Strikers game to start on Saturday, I read the Tennessean. It was full of vociferous letters to the editor about Redford, some for the flag, some against it.
Saturday night, Jack and I stayed late at Peace Inn. Around two in the morning a teenage girl with a black eye showed up. I called the police, showed her where the shower was, got her some clean clothes from the clothes box, and found her an empty bed. When she took off her jacket, I saw she had the same tattoo on her bicep as Ron Bingham.
The next day, we were at the Peace Inn again, helping the latest round of temporary residents prepare a spaghetti lunch, when Jack’s mother appeared on the local TV news. Representing the Redford Historical Association, she told a reporter that the Confederate battle flag had never been intended as a symbol of racis
m, and that bigots had simply usurped it. Half the kids we were with were black; they snickered at the TV as they cooked.
Very late that afternoon, Jack introduced me to yet another of his favorite spots—the top of Redford’s water tower. The trick, he said, was not to look down as you climbed. But I was still petrified. Once we’d reached the flat summit, though, it was worth it. The setting sun shimmered on the horizon, and the late-October air had a definite chill. When Jack held me, I felt as if we were suspended in some magical place where only the two of us existed.
Maybe it was that magic that made me start to speculate about our future. I thought aloud about how next year I’d return to Englecliff High as a senior and have my shot at Showcase. How Jack could start his freshman year at Juilliard. Then, after I graduated, I’d go to NYU, and we’d get an apartment together in Manhattan. I’d write plays and Jack would be in them. We’d be so happy.
He didn’t say a word. Which made me think that maybe I was being incredibly presumptuous. “I swear, I’m not trying to talk you into anything,” I added hastily. “But I don’t think doing the right thing … should have to mean giving up your dreams.”
He gazed into the sunset, as if seeing our future just beyond the horizon. He said he’d make his mother understand that his dreams were different from hers. He said so long as we had each other, we had everything. He said he loved me. The sun disappeared, night fell, and he kissed me until the light of all the stars was inside me. Together, we were above the fray. We were invincible.
It happened three days later, on Wednesday.
If I hadn’t promised Tisha the history notes she’d missed because of a doctor’s appointment, I would never have known. Her locker was in the high school’s new wing. So when the final bell rang, I trucked down there—the opposite direction from where I usually met Jack after school. In this wing, on Wednesdays, representatives from various colleges and universities set up shop. Seniors could get excused from last period to go hear the rap on why they should attend whatever school was recruiting that day.
I’d already passed two classrooms filled with students and recruiters when what I’d seen on an easel outside one of them registered in my mind. I stopped, then backtracked. There was the hand-lettered sign. THE CITADEL, CHARLESTON, SC.
A Heart Divided Page 10
