My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today

by Bill Dodds

  I took a deep breath. I was treading water. I hadn’t gone too far downstream. The pain in my rump had lessened a little, from a 10 down to a 9.5.

  “I’ve been better,” I said

  He really hooted at that one. “You all right, Michael,” he said. “You all right.”

  We swam and splashed and threw mud at each other and swung out on the rope for another hour or so. It was as if I had passed some kind of an initiation. I was one of them: just another kid.

  When we were all too tired to stay in the water anymore we climbed up to a warm spot by the bushes and let the sun dry us off. I noticed that the skin on my shoulders was starting to turn pink.

  “I think I’m getting sunburned,” I said and Richard looked at his shoulders and said, “Oh, no, me, too” and everybody laughed.

  “How did you guys meet?” I asked. “You go to the same school?”

  They all laughed at that, too.

  “Michael,” Richard said, sounding very serious, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a Negro.”

  “You are?” Charlie said, sounding shocked.

  “Him and Bucky and Martin . . .” That was the third white kid. “ . . .all go to the white school,” Richard said. “Nate and I go to the colored school. Or we did. I went up through fourth grade. Nate’s still going. He just got done with fifth.”

  “You quit school after the fourth grade?” I asked, shocked.

  “I didn’t just quit,” he said, sounding a little offended. “I had to go to work.”

  “You work? I mean full time?”

  “Well, yeah,” Richard said. “Lots of boys do. Girls, too.”

  “And they don’t go to school?” I asked.

  “Yeah, where you been?” he asked. “Kids work in mines and in factories and on farms and anywhere else they can make fifteen or twenty cents.”

  “An hour!” Again, I was shocked.

  “An hour,” Richard said, imitating me. “Listen to him. Twenty cents in a day.”

  “Eight hours to . . .”

  “Eight?” Richard said. “No. Ten. Twelve. Sometimes fourteen. I’m lucky. I get off some Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday. I got a good job.”

  “What’s your job?” I asked.

  “In town. At the colored blacksmith’s shop.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Whatever he tells me.”

  “Richard’s going to be a blacksmith when he grows up,” Charlie said.

  “I sure hope so,” Richard said. “Every town’s always going to need a good blacksmith or two.”

  “You sure got the arm for it,” Charlie said, pointing at his own head. The other boys laughed. It was obvious I didn’t get the joke.

  “Richard can throw a rock a lot farther than I can,” Charlie said. “Show him.”

  Richard easily hopped up and then loped down to the river’s edge. He found a rock about the size of a pool ball and climbed back up.

  “What you want me to hit?” he asked me. I pointed at a tree that was maybe twenty feet away.

  “Pshaw,” he said. “See that stump?” He pointed across the river to a spot that was maybe a hundred feet from us.

  “Uh huh,” I said as he cocked his arm and let the rock fly. It slammed into the rotting piece of wood and chunks of stump went everywhere.

  I had never seen any kid throw anything that far or that fast with such accuracy. “You should play baseball,” I said.

  “I do,” he answered. “Sunday afternoons. The Culver City colored boys team.”

  “You keep at it,” I said, “and you could play professionally. No kidding. In the major league.”

  Suddenly it was deathly quiet.

  “That’s not funny,” Charlie said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know a Negro can’t play in the major leagues.”

  How was I supposed to know that? This was a whole different world.

  “But you swim together,” I protested, trying to defend myself.

  “Here,” Charlie said. “Not in town. Not even near town.”

  “Coloreds got separate everything,” Bucky said.

  “But you guys are friends,” I said. “I know you are.”

  “That’s a fact,” Richard said. “But last summer when Charlie and Bucky and Martin here found our swimming hole we didn’t give it up without a fight.”

  “The rocks were flying,” Charlie agreed, rubbing his head. “Richard and Nate were up in the bushes over there on the other side. We couldn’t even see who was throwing them.”

  “That was a battle, all right,” Richard said.

  “But now you both use it,” I said.

  “Uh huh,” Charlie said. “That was a hot summer and neither one of us could get in the water without getting shelled by the other. We had to call a truce.”

  “Too hot to fight,” Richard agreed, “even if you are winning, and we were. But I’ll never forget old Bucky’s face when he saw me and Nate coming out of those bushes.”

  “He looked pretty shocked, all right,” Charlie said. “And then he says, ‘Ah, who cares? We’re all sweatin’ like hogs. I’m goin’ swimmin’.’”

  “This must be the best place in the whole world to swim,” I said and no one disagreed with me.

  “I could spend the rest of my life at Fair Brook,” Charlie said.

  Chapter 18

  You Call This Toilet Paper?

  The walk home seemed a lot longer. I was really tired and I needed to go to the bathroom, too. I mean poop, not pee. It wasn’t like we were passing any gas stations or drive-ins along the way that had restrooms. I think Charlie was tired, too. We hardly talked at all.

  When we finally started heading up the driveway, I said, “I got first dibs on the bathroom.”

  “What?” he asked. We sure said that a lot to one another.

  “Or have you got more than one?” I asked.

  “More than one?”

  “Nature calls,” I said. “I need to . . . you know.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Sure. People in the future still do that?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “and I need to right now.”

  “Come on,” he said, leading me around the back of the summer kitchen and along a well-worn path. I knew what it was because I’ve been camping. It was an outhouse. Painted the same color as the regular house, with a little sliver of a moon carved into the door.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. He shrugged. I opened the door and stepped up into it. I noticed that outhouses hadn’t changed much in eighty-eight years. This one smelled pretty much like every other one I had been in.

  “I gotta get started on my chores,” Charlie said. “You take your time.” He shut the door and it was dark in there. Warm, too. I could hear a fly buzzing up in one corner. There wasn’t a toilet seat, just a hole in a board.

  Good enough! I sat down and took care of my business and then started looking around for the toilet paper. Uh oh.

  On the seat next to me was an old “Sears, Roebuck and Co.” store catalog. I leafed through it while I continued to sit there and wait for Charlie to come back. I figured I could tell him what I needed.

  I was amazed at how cheap everything in the catalog was. Just a few dollars for suits and dresses and musical instruments and just about anything else you could ever want.

  There was no electronic stuff, not even some big, old radios. I wondered when the radio was invented. I tried to imagine my family going through a day without electricity, hot and cold water, flush toilets, radios, televisions, VCRs, microwaves. The list went on and on. I didn’t see how anything new could ever be invented. I figured we already had it all.

  My buns were getting kind of sore from just sitting there and, truth be told, they might have been a little sunburned, too. I heard someone walking around outside and so I shouted, “Hey!”

  “What?” a little voice answered.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Sissie,” she said.

>   “Sissie, where’s Charlie?” I asked.

  “He’s doing his chores,” she said.

  “There’s no toilet paper in here,” I said.

  “Mama has toilet water,” she answered.

  “She has what?” I asked.

  “Toilet water,” she said through the door. “It smells real good. One time Brigid put some on me and I smelled just like lilacs and Papa said . . .”

  “No,” I said, “I need toilet paper.”

  “What’s that?”

  She was kidding, right?

  “It’s a roll of perforated paper,” I said. “You tear off a piece after you’re done . . . after you’re done and you use it to . . .”

  “What’s perfrated?”

  “What?”

  “What’s perfrated?” she asked again.

  “That doesn’t matter, Sissie,” I said. “I need some paper.”

  “Oh,” she said. “To wipe your butt.”

  “Uh . . . . Well, yeah.”

  “It’s supposed to be in there,” she said.

  “I know,” I answered, “but it’s not. Could you go get Charlie?”

  “Charlie’s doing his chores. Can you hurry up in there? I gotta go.”

  “Sissie,” I said, “there’s no paper. I can’t . . .”

  “The catalog isn’t in there?” she asked.

  “The catalog?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Right next to where you’re sitting. Rip out a page and hurry up ’cause I gotta go!”

  It was then I noticed the first third of the catalog was missing. The pages had been ripped out.

  “Come on!” she was yelling and starting to bang on the door with her little hands.

  “Somebody fall in?” I heard Pat ask and laugh.

  “Cousin Michael’s in there,” Sissie said, “and he’s talking about toilet water and he won’t give me a turn and I gotta . . . .” She went on and on and I ripped out a couple of pages and used them. They had drawings and descriptions of ladies shoes with buttons. At least the paper was more like a newspaper than some slick magazine.

  “All yours,” I said, stepping out.

  “ ’Bout time!” she huffed.

  “You all right?” Uncle Peter asked me. He was standing in the back yard with Pat.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You ever pitch?” he asked, holding up a horseshoe.

  “Pitch?”

  “Horseshoes,” he said, pointing down at a metal pole that stuck about a foot and a half out of the ground.

  “No,” I said.

  “You want to try?” Pat asked.

  “Careful,” Uncle Peter warned me. “Pat’s one of the best in the county.”

  “The best after next Saturday,” he said. “That’s when I take first prize at the Culver City Founders’ Day Festival.”

  “This could be your year,” his father agreed. Pat carefully aimed at another pole that was about forty feet from where he and Uncle Peter were standing. He threw the metal shoe and it hit the pole with a clang and spun around it.

  “So what do you like?” Uncle Peter asked me. “Baseball?”

  “It’s all right,” I said, “but my game is bask . . .”

  “IT SURE STINKS IN THERE!” Sissie announced, coming out of the outhouse and I felt myself blushing.

  “Sissie!” her father scolded her.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Pat said, “Michael here doesn’t pitch horseshoes. He’s a juggler. He was telling me and Charlie all about it this morning. Promised to put on a show right after supper.”

  Chapter 19

  I Entertain the Family

  Pat looked like he thought he really had me now. He kept that same expression while we were eating dinner. Excuse me. He kept it while we were eating supper.

  Supper was leftovers from dinner and it still tasted good. All that swimming and walking had made me very hungry.

  “Are you done with the sideboard, Papa?” asked Jerome, who looked about eight or nine.

  “I’ll finish the carving on Monday for sure,” he answered.

  “So you just need tomorrow and Monday?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday, Michael,” Uncle Peter said.

  “I know. Sir.”

  “No working on Sunday.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sure you’re a Catholic?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A Roman Catholic?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you know there’s no unnecessary servile work on Sunday. Taking care of the animals and that’s about it.”

  “Michael here had to work on Sundays, didn’t you Michael?” Pat asked me. “I mean, when you were in vaudeville.”

  “That was necessary,” Charlie said.

  “Do you have any plans, Michael?” Aunt Mary asked me. “You’re welcome to stay, of course, but I was just wondering.”

  “I think I’ll head for home in about a week,” I said. I hoped so. “I’d like to stay here till next Saturday. If that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course, it is, laddie,” Uncle Peter said. “With you we’ve got our own entertainment.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant because they thought I was in vaudeville or if he meant because I kept saying things that sounded so stupid to them.

  “And,” Uncle Peter continued, “after we eat we expect a little show. You’ll be singing for your supper here, Michael.”

  “He’s getting a cold,” Charlie said. “Shouldn’t have gone swimming. It’s getting worse.”

  “Let me see,” Aunt Mary said. She stood up and came over to me. She put her hand on my forehead and then made me say “Ahh” while she looked at my throat. “Fit as a fiddle,” she decided.

  “Castor oil,” Pat said. “What he needs is castor oil.”

  “That’s the last thing he needs,” Sissie said and Uncle Peter told her to hush.

  While Aunt Mary and the girls did the dishes, using water that had been heated on the wood stove in the summer kitchen, Uncle Peter and the two older boys went out to check on the animals.

  “Since we have company,” Aunt Mary said, “I believe we’ll use the parlor this evening.”

  “Is it all right if I show Michael the rest of the house?” Charlie asked and she nodded. “Come on,” he said to me.

  First he led me out to the summer kitchen. It looked a lot like the other kitchen only it was smaller and it had a little table. The main part of the house was the regular kitchen, a dining room (“Which we never use,” Charlie said.) and a parlor.

  A parlor, I discovered, is a living room. There was a sofa, a couple of stuffed chairs, a piano and some end tables with weird lamps on them.

  “How do these work?” I asked, pointing to the lamps.

  “Kerosene,” Charlie said.

  Then he led me upstairs. There were three bedrooms. One for the boys, one for the girls, and one for Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary and Francis.

  “Let’s go, boys,” I heard a man call up the stairs. “We’re waiting for you.” It sounded just like Dad.

  “Coming, Pa,” Charlie answered. “Look at this,” he said, opening the top drawer of his dresser. He pulled out an old sock, a clean one. Inside it was about two dozen marbles. “I got twelve of these this morning for my birthday,” he said. “One for each year. Get it?”

  “Uh huh.”

  That was it? Twelve lousy marbles?

  “You play?” he asked.

  “Play?”

  “Marbles.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “It’s a fun game,” he said.

  Marbles was a game?

  “Look at this one,” he said. It was clear glass with streaks of red, white and blue in it. “This is my best one,” he said.

  “BOYS!”

  We headed downstairs and everyone else was in the parlor. They were on their knees, facing the sofa and the chairs. Aunt Mary nodded at the door and Charlie reached around back and took two rosaries from the door knob. He hande
d one to me and then he knelt down. I did, too.