The Planet of Junior Brown

by Virginia Hamilton

They all fell silent. Only Buddy had continued thinking clearly. “This is the last time we can come here,” he said.

  “I don’t see why,” Mr. Pool said. “You been coming here. You got caught one time but it don’t mean you’ll be caught again. I won’t be caught again, either.”

  “What if Rountree is out there waiting for us in the morning?” Buddy said.

  Mr. Pool told him, “Rountree will wait in his office like he’s supposed to. Don’t you worry, just come here a little earlier, if you want.”

  Tomorrow was Friday. Buddy remembered, he had to go with Junior to Miss Peebs’ house on Friday. He looked at Mr. Pool. “You say you will be here tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll have everything put away by then,” Mr. Pool said.

  Buddy turned to Junior. “What you going to do about tomorrow?” he said to Junior. “How you going to tell your mother to be here?”

  But Junior wouldn’t say. He sat there, rocking, watching the solar system come to an end. Buddy dropped to the floor; with his arms hugging his knees, he watched Mr. Pool. Tediously they all waited out the day for school to be over. Only after the last buzzer sounded and all the teachers had gone did Buddy and Junior prepare to leave.

  “I’m counting on you,” Mr. Pool thought to tell Buddy at the door. “It’s not fair of me, I know, but I depend on you.”

  With tiredness showing in his eyes, Buddy looked fondly on Mr. Pool. If he could have a father, he would have only this man. “I got a feeling,” Buddy said, “everything’s going to be all right.”

  The two of them made their escape. Buddy accompanied Junior all the way to Junior’s house. On the steps outside he told Junior, “I’ll pick you up early tomorrow.” They stood there with Junior answering nothing.

  Buddy would have liked to have known what Junior would tell his mother but he wouldn’t ask Junior again. He left. He turned on his heel and let Junior go up alone.

  Junior entered his mother’s apartment. His mother was there for him, as she always was. She was there but this time she didn’t rush to meet him. She didn’t pick at him or question him with her bright watching. His mother acted distant, strange. She retreated to the kitchen while he put his outer garments away. Junior wondered about her silence only for a moment. He was worn out. He went to his room, unwilling to face her without knowing what he would say. Junior found his room neat and clean, as usual. He went straight to the bed and fell heavily across it.

  “What am I going to do?” Junior wondered. He closed his eyes but he couldn’t sleep. Exhausted, his mind tumbled with thinking. He felt almost glad to be nearly finished with hiding in the basement room. Months of sitting in the dark hiding place had become monotonous. Days of sitting had bored him close to death. Only with Mr. Pool and Buddy’s construction of the solar system had his mind been occupied for a while.

  Junior is fixin ta die. If I tell Mama to come to school, then what? Friday, I got to go see Miss Peebs. Saturday, Daddy comes home. Sometimes. Then what?

  Junior thought and thought. With his eyes closed, all was night. He could be red.

  Junior jumped, remembering something. He slid to the edge of the bed and looked underneath it. In a moment he let the bedspread fall back over the box spring. Grunting, he hurled himself over to the closet.

  I was sleepy this morning. I could have put the canvas away.

  Junior knew he hadn’t taken The Red Man up. Inside his closet, he found his paint box and the piece of wood he used for mixing paints, but no Red Man. Suddenly Junior felt too heavy to stand up any longer. He lurched for the bed and lay there panting until he had calmed. At suppertime his mother called him. She wouldn’t come into his room to get him.

  Junior ate his supper alone in the kitchen. He ate slowly everything she had placed on the table for him to eat. His mother had disappeared in her own room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  No use his looking for The Red Man. His mother would have got rid of it by now. Cutting it to pieces, she would have burned The Red Man piece by painted piece in the kitchen sink.

  No use for him ever to explain to her. Seeing all those people living in The Red Man—doing awful things, she would say—his mother knew now that she hadn’t known him at all.

  The Red Man people just had been living their lives. With that thought Junior knew what he had to do. So he ate his food, savoring its rich taste, loving it tightly, the way some folks love a gamble.

  Junella Brown sat in her rocker next to the big bed in her bedroom. She had her arms crossed tightly below her narrow chest. Her legs were crossed one over the other just as tightly, and her eyes were fixed on the closed door.

  She had found the canvas with the paint still wet, under Junior’s bed, when she had entered his room to clean it this very morning. As she was making his bed, her foot knocked against the edge of something. Stooping down to see, she’d pulled out that big canvas Junior had been painting. At first Junella couldn’t tell what it was but something made her go search Junior’s desk for his magnifying glass. When she found the glass, she came back; she got on her knees to examine the painting.

  “Oh, what an awful thing!” she whispered now. “What a terrible, sick thing he’s done!”

  Junella watched the door. If Junior came to the room, she would have to face him. She hoped he wouldn’t. She wanted to wait for his father to come home.

  The painting had been full of people involved with one another in a way Junella knew any decent boy would never think to draw. And to see how he had squeezed them all in this red, red figure of a man! Is that what Junior’s mind was full of? Images of people living their most private lives? And Junior had painted whole streets of people—robbers, drunkards—people hurting one another. There had even been a figure that resembled herself. There had been that boy, that Buddy Clark, who was everywhere in the painting, all over the streets.

  If there was some way she could get that Buddy Clark sent away, Junella could then maybe help Junior back to reality.

  Junior had been in the painting, like a single brown ball bouncing on street corners, jiving in school yards. Junior had painted himself everywhere in the city where he had no business being!

  Junella had experienced a mild asthma attack after finding the painting. She had needed to use the nebulizer but had come out of the attack only slightly weakened. Afterward she’d slept for some time. When she awoke, she’d returned to Junior’s room and taken care of that painting. Wet as it was, she didn’t dare burn it, so she sent it down the incinerator with the rest of her garbage.

  “That’s that,” she said from the rocker. “I’ll never give him canvas again as long as I live.”

  After he’d eaten his supper, Junior went back to his room and played the piano halfheartedly. He didn’t emerge from his room until morning. Only once did Junella come out of her bedroom, to clean up the kitchen after Junior and to wash up in the bathroom. Then she went directly to her room. She stayed there, controlling herself so she would not bring on another attack. In the morning she rose with the alarm clock ringing and at once went in to prepare Junior’s breakfast. She would not say a word to him, she told herself. He would have to come to her and ask her for help.

  Junella prepared Junior a good, hearty meal, just the kind he liked. She was certain that with the breakfast they could sit down and have a good conversation about what he had done.

  “I destroyed that painting, Junior, because I know you weren’t yourself when you thought to paint it.” Yes, that was the kind of thing she might say to him when they sat down to talk.

  Standing in the dining room, she called Junior to come for breakfast. Then Junella went back to the kitchen and sat down. “You can never have materials for painting, Junior, until you can demonstrate to me you will occupy your mind with thoughts proper and normal for your age group.” Yes, she could say that. Junior had always been the kind of boy who was obedient, who listened to his parents.

  When his father gets here, the two of them can talk man to man, Ju
nella thought. Oh, thank God for a man like Walter for the boy. He would know just what to say to bring Junior back to right thinking.

  Junior was slow coming to breakfast this morning. When Junella knocked on his bedroom door, there was no answer. She looked in. Junior wasn’t there.

  Junior had fled the house long before Junella’s alarm went off. He had taken his paint box, his music and that funny, childish wind-up toy he always kept on his desk. He’d even taken his raincoat, his best shoes and new brown cashmere sweater. He’d worn his best suit.

  If Junella had thought quickly enough, she would have realized that Junior took mostly that which would keep him warmest on cold winter nights. She thought only that Junior was angry over the painting. She figured he would stay out late with that Buddy Clark of his, way late, past his lesson and maybe past his bedtime.

  “All right then,” she told herself. “You can just stay out there, but you’ll get hungry. You’ll get cold and tired and then you’ll head for home. Oh, it’s a lesson some boys have to learn. I won’t get myself sick over it. You wait until your father gets home!”

  Mr. Pool had taken it upon himself to care for them this day. Junior and Buddy. In the basement room Mr. Pool had brought enough supplies to last them a good five days. With the way Junior Brown could eat, maybe no more than three days, Buddy thought. Still there was lots of stuff. There was a good-sized carton with two thermos bottles of hot chocolate. There were hard-boiled eggs, a half gallon of milk and lots of sweet rolls wrapped in plastic wrap to keep them fresh. There were egg salad sandwiches, ham sandwiches and cheese sandwiches. There was even a jar of pickles and a half-pack of cold beer for Mr. Pool.

  “Man-o-man!” Buddy said, “we going to have ourselves a party!”

  “Help yourselves,” Mr. Pool said. “You can’t walk out of here until everybody else is long gone.”

  Junior dropped his suitcase on the floor, flung off his raincoat and sweater and attacked the food. Buddy was hungry too, but what he wanted most was something hot to drink. He was beginning to believe that cold, like inches, was a part of his growing. He had even said so earlier to Doum Malach. Old Doum had told him this story. “We are deeply opposed to cold,” Doum had told him. “That’s why the white folks turn it on us about every six months.”

  Remembering, Buddy had to smile. Doum was crazy but his was a good kind of crazy that tried to protect you. He hadn’t even mentioned to Buddy the fact that Buddy had used him in a lie to Mr. Rountree.

  For a moment Buddy thought fondly of Doum. Then, eagerly, he took up a thermos and found the chocolate steaming. It burned his mouth but he gulped it down all the same, as though he’d never tasted anything quite like it.

  “Oh, man,” Buddy said, “that’s precious stuff.” He wiped his mouth. With the thermos in hand, he turned to Junior. Junior had all but eaten one ham sandwich and had started on a hard-boiled egg. Junior had taken the other thermos of chocolate.

  “Wait up for me,” Buddy told him. “You going to eat it all before I get to sit down good.”

  “Shuh,” Junior said, not unkindly. Junior couldn’t be too unkind even to Buddy when he was eating.

  Chewing on a sandwich, Buddy thought to ask Mr. Pool, “How come you brought so much stuff?”

  Mr. Pool was busy with a long rectangle of a box about a foot square and maybe five feet long. He had stuffed the bottom of the box with crumpled newspaper. Now he gently shoved the sun in. Their solar system was in the process of coming down. Mr. Pool had attached a forty-watt bulb on a cord to Junior’s chair to give himself enough light to work by.

  Without knowing it they had all braced themselves for this coming apart of worlds. Now Buddy and Junior could see it happening and not lose heart. The food was a big help, a comfort. Mr. Pool had known it would be.

  “I figured I’d bring enough to eat for today, of course,” Mr. Pool said, “and maybe have some left over for tomorrow. But from the looks of things I’m going to have to start over buying the first thing Saturday morning.”

  “You mean for us to stay here?” Buddy asked him.

  “I don’t know even yet,” Mr. Pool told him. “I’m packing up everything, though. I’ll have this box filled tonight. After that, I don’t know. We’ll be ready to stay or ready to go.”

  “Go, more better than likely,” Buddy said.

  “But where?” Mr. Pool asked him.

  “I got the whole day to worry over it,” Buddy said. He glanced at Junior. Still eating, Junior hadn’t told Buddy one thing about what he was planning to do. He had come out of his house way early this morning all dressed up and with that suitcase banging his leg. Buddy hadn’t bothered to ask Junior what was in the case. It was Friday. Junior had nothing else in his hands. He knew Junior’s Fake Book, at least, was inside the suitcase. And Junior must have taken whatever else a body would think to want when they were running from home. Junior was wearing those sharp clothes of his all at the same time.

  “You going to burn up in all that,” Buddy had told him, knowing how Junior couldn’t stand to wear so much clothing.

  “Give you my sweater to wear,” Junior had told him, “maybe even my raincoat. But first, let’s get us on out of here.”

  They’d gone quickly in the morning light; the cold sun had been behind them, eyeing them without heat. Even then, Buddy hadn’t asked Junior if he’d told his mother about coming to school.

  That’s why Junior cut out early, Buddy thought. Junior didn’t tell her and he ain’t going to be around when she finds out.

  Mr. Pool spent a good while packing and unpacking one or two plastic planets to see how he could arrange them to fit in the box in the least amount of space.

  “You shouldn’t put them in first,” Buddy told him.

  “I know that, son,” Pool said, “I just am figuring. The tracks have got to be straightened and put in first. Then the rods and cords, but that’s going to take me more time than I can give this here morning.”

  Mr. Pool had to go out and see to the school.

  “You want the light on?” Buddy asked Junior after Mr. Pool had gone. With the light on there was no way for them to avoid looking at the broken-down system.

  “No,” Junior said.

  Buddy turned off the light bulb. Leaping darkness closed in on them. Junior was full and comfortable in the dark. He felt warm but not hot. He bunched up his raincoat for a pillow and stretched out on the floor. “Buddy?”

  “Yea,” Buddy said.

  “Come take my sweater.”

  “Oh, man!” Buddy said. He removed his jacket and fumbled through the dark for Junior’s sweater. When he had hold of it, he just felt it for a minute. It felt like the softest wool in the world. Buddy eased himself into it.

  “I hate to rub up on this floor with it,” Buddy said. He thought to spread out his jacket. Then, he placed himself carefully on the jacket so that Junior’s sweater never touched the floor.

  So it was that the day passed for Buddy and Junior. They slept a while there on the floor. They awoke, they ate again and later they talked quietly with Mr. Pool. No one found them out.

  7

  JUNIOR,” BUDDY WHISPERED, “what is going on?”

  “Shhhh!” It was Miss Peebs.

  The moment Buddy walked inside Miss Peebs’ house, he knew all his years in the street hadn’t prepared him for such a place.

  On all sides in this great, long hallway were mountains of shrouded things. White, giant monsters pressed in on Buddy in the dim, mad place, as he walked a narrow tightrope of a path. He brought up the rear. Junior was in front of him. The crazy woman led the way.

  Buddy thought of turning around and just going to the foyer and out the front door. He dared not look behind him. There were those dead, giant things even in back of him. He felt the hair all over him tickle and seem to rise.

  You could die here. Some big things would come out from behind the dead giants and carve a hole in you. Or she might do it when you had your mind on those giant
s coming to life.

  The moment she opened the door, Buddy knew Miss Peebs was crazy. He had taken one look at the silk, all-black get-up she wore, her pits of burning eyes, and he knew her mind was lost behind the deadly yellow of her face.

  With no light, the shrouded place of the giants was creepy and shaded gray. Miss Peebs had covered the piles of furniture in the hall with muslin dust covers. Buddy kept his hands taut at his sides. He didn’t look left or right but braced his body for any attack. Buddy had only his nerve to fight with; he knew it would never do.

  Miss Peebs opened a door off the hallway. They went in to a living room where there was a ceiling light burning. Noise came screaming at them from raised windows. Noise knocked into tier upon tier of piled things—chests and bureaus, chairs and bookcases.

  Dust choked Buddy and noise bit at the dust settling on his skin. The only silence anywhere was a comfortable sofa with soft pillows. There was a monster but it had no shroud. It was a great dark roundness with teeth and black, shredded gums.

  Actually, Miss Peebs’ piano was a pool of beauty. Buddy had been so ready for giants, he hadn’t seen it for what it was. It was just a long and lovely piano. It was a perfect thing in the room.

  Buddy stared around with his mouth open at the piles and piles of stuff with no space for questions or even answers. His eyes paused at something by the windows. It was the one place in the room that was covered by a white shroud. Square and flat under its coverlet, it was a separate, gleaming patch of white amidst chaos, like moonlight on a battlefield.

  Buddy walked over to the couch and sat stiff and straight on the edge of it. Junior was standing on the path just beyond the couch, with Buddy on one side and the piano on the other. Miss Peebs was in front of him, standing sideways on the path.

  Junior had been so relieved to find Miss Peebs’ piano in one piece. But then, he’d noticed the same shrouded place Buddy had seen. Fear rose in him. Wave upon wave of fear for the piano’s safety made him shudder. The white, shrouded patch was like a bed, like a pen, to keep something confined.