Leaving: A Novel

by Richard Dry

  From the beginning Lincoln had maintained that the aim of the war was to unite the country, and throughout he based his conservative approach on his desire to keep the border states loyal. He cited this when he revoked emancipation orders issued by two of his generals. Then, even when the time came for the admission that slavery was “at the root of the rebellion” the Emancipation Proclamation, so joyously hailed, was itself a reaffirmation of his caution, for it freed only the slaves in the rebel states.

  CHAPTER 15

  January 1994 • RUBY 56, LOVE 14, LI’L PIT 10

  BY TEN-FORTY AT night, Li’l Pit was asleep upstairs after gorging himself on nachos and ice cream from the salad and dessert bar at Sizzler. Downstairs, Love sat on the corner of Ruby’s bed while she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her shoes off and her feet swollen in her stockings.

  Love hadn’t been in her room more than twice before, and it seemed like an eerie place, out of time. The bed was thick and so high off the ground that his feet didn’t touch. There was a dim yellow light cast by the small lamp at her bedside and a large oak-framed mirror above her dresser. A thick smell of baby powder hung in the air, and the walls were covered in pastel blue wallpaper.

  “We could say that he’s got to get out if he doesn’t quit the crew?” Love turned to his grandmother, but she shook her head.

  “He’ll jus leave. Then you lost him forever. I been there before with your mama.” Ruby rubbed one foot with the other.

  “Could lock him in his room.”

  “And what you think he gonna do when he get out? ’Cause you know one day he gonna get out. Then we that boy’s worse enemies, and he goin go an join up with your hoodlums.”

  Love stood and paced at the foot of her bed. “We got to do something. There’s got to be something to do.” He stopped and turned to her excitedly. “We could take him to Juvi. We could take him there and have them keep him.”

  “You know he’s got to have done something first.”

  “That’s right. He just has to do something.” Love started pacing again, his eyes flashing in excitement. “He got to kill somebody, and then they’ll take him to the home and he won’t get all messed up here.”

  “Use your head. You are the dumbest boy I ever heard. You gonna get him to kill someone so he don’t get mixed up in crime. What kinda thinking is that?”

  “My bad.” Love laughed at himself.

  “Go in the kitchen and get me a tub of hot water and then I’ll tell you what we gonna do. And pour some of them salts in there.”

  Love went into the kitchen, ran hot water into a metal tub, and brought it back for her. When he returned, she was in her nightgown, sitting at the edge of her bed.

  Love watched her touch the water with her toes, pull them out, dip them down a little farther, and pull them out again, all the time breathing through her pursed lips like a woman giving birth. When she finally had her feet resting solidly at the bottom of the tub, she turned to Love and smiled.

  “My husband, your mama’s papa, your real granpapa, name was Ronal. That’s what she named you. Your real name is Ronal LeRoy after your granpapa.”

  “I know my own name.”

  “But you didn’t know where it came from, now did you? Now hush up and listen. I got something to tell you. Your granpapa was gonna go to college. He wanted to go to college jus like you want for Paul, but he didn’t always want to go. He wanted to go ’cause he was scared into it. He tole me this story, that before he was born, his papa was a bootleg. That’s when they had no liquor allowed by law, and he made his money running corn whiskey. Now, he work for a Catholic man and they sell their whiskey all the way over to Walterboro. And you could make a lot of money doing that. And so he tried on his own to sell, and got into competition with the Catholic man and they had their problems. But Ronal’s papa gave all his moonshine to the police for free, so they leave him alone and he saved up a whole lot a money. Then the law changed and it was legal to sell liquor and there wasn’t no more business. Now six years later his wife had Ronal, ’bout the same time I was born. By then, Ronal’s papa worked for a coal mine cause he was too old for the war. And he took Ronal out to the mine when he was big enough and showed him how he went down into that hole, way down, and come up all dirty. Now, that hole was dark, and down in there wasn’t hardly any space to breathe and sometime it creaked and cracked and it already scared Ronal just looking down into it. On top a that, his papa got up at five every morning and come home every day all tired and aching and had no money, sayin how this was jus like slavery times. This scared Ronal even more, ’cause his older brother was going to work for the mine when he turn fourteen, and he saw what was coming for him. Then one day his papa didn’t come home. There was an accident at the mine an his papa was killed. And that’s when his mama tole him about all the money saved up from the bootleg days that Ronal was supposed to use to go to college, and if he never been thinking about it before, he never stop thinking about it after that. See, he was scared into it. And that’s what we got to do with Paul.”

  Love shook his head. “Just one problem. Can’t no one scare Li’l Pit more than he already been scared. I guess that’s the whole difference between now and then.”

  There was a bang on the front door, like a brick thrown against it.

  “Don’t get it,” Love said. He stared toward the front of the house through the bedroom wall like he had X-ray vision.

  “Course I’m gonna get my own door.” Ruby slid her feet into her pink fur slippers and trudged up the hall.

  “Tell him we’re not here. Tell him we’re out in San Leandro.”

  “Who’s that?” Ruby yelled through the door.

  There was a faint yelling coming from the street. Ruby opened the door and looked down the stairs at the young man in a wheelchair.

  “I’m a friend of Love’s. I need to talk with him real bad.” Love stood at the back of the hallway, almost twenty feet away from the door.

  “What you want?” Ruby yelled.

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “It’s late. You can talk to him tomarrah.”

  “I need to talk to him now. It’s an emergency.”

  “He’s asleep. It can wait until tomarrah.”

  “I need to talk to him now, bitch!” Curse took his gun out from under his shirt and laid it in his lap. Ruby slammed the door shut.

  “You get on outta here or I’m callin the police,” she yelled. “You get on home.”

  “Listen old bitch,” Curse yelled. “You tell that punk to check his batteries. Tell him he needs to call Curse. You tell him that.”

  “You get. I’m callin the police right now.”

  “I don’t give a shit. They ain’t gonna come out here for no tired old lady.”

  Ruby backed up another step, but then she heard no more yelling. She turned to Love. His jaw was set and his fists clenched as he looked at the door.

  “You’re the dumbest chile I ever did see.”

  “He’s gonna come back.”

  “And don’t you go and tell me how you gonna fix him when he do.”

  “I didn’t say that. But he is gonna come back, maybe tonight or maybe in the morning, but he’s going to come with some other guys who can come up the stairs.”

  “Well, you’re not going to be here when he come.”

  She walked back down the hall and went into the kitchen. She pulled the stepladder from the pantry, pushed it over to the counter, and lifted up her cotton nightgown so she could bend her knees to climb.

  “I’m going to have faith in you,” she said. “There ain’t nothing you can do now but leave.” Love stood in the kitchen doorway and watched his grandmother reach up into the high cupboards where she always retrieved extra cans of tomato sauce. She stretched her arms above her head and felt around blindly, then pulled out a glass pickle jar filled with dollar bills.

  “You’ve got to promise me that you will follow my plan. If you break your promise, don’t never
come back here, ’cause you’ll have lost all my faith left in goodness, and I only got but that much left. You’ve got to promise me that you will use this for savin your brother. I ain’t got nothin but your word, and I’m gonna trust that your word is the honest word of a man. I’m going to tell you what to do, and you got to keep your word like a man keep his word.”

  Love didn’t say anything. He knew a man’s word wasn’t something you kept by promising you would keep it. It was something you kept by doing what you promised. He knew that from Tom at Los Aspirantes, who just showed up every day and kept at it even though the kids were hitting and kicking him. And he knew it from Freight, who didn’t need to say a threat twice. He knew, too, that like the quick sweep of a broom out onto the back stoop, his life was about to start all over, once again.

  PART TWO

  SANTA RITA JAIL

  TODAY I START my reading with Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery:

  Early the next morning word was sent to all the slaves, old and young, to gather at the house. In company with my mother, brother, and sister, and a large number of other slaves, I went to the master’s house. All of our master’s family were either standing or seated on the verandah of the house, where they could see what was to take place and hear what was said. There was a feeling of deep interest, or perhaps sadness, on their faces, but not bitterness. As I now recall the impression they made upon me, they did not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property, but rather because of the parting with those whom they had reared and who were in many ways very close to them. The most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think.

  After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.

  For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated colored people lasted but for a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself. In a few hours the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education, citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. Was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and the feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? To some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of abode. Besides, deep down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to “old Marster” and “old Missus,” and to the children, which they found it hard to think of breaking off. With these they had spent in some cases nearly a half century, and it was no light thing to think of parting. Gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to wander from the slave quarters back to the big house to have a whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future.

  CHAPTER 1A

  JANUARY 1994 • RUBY 56, LOVE 14, LI’L PIT 10

  LOVE WOKE LI’L Pit at five o’clock in the morning, before it was light, before anyone from the crew would be on the street. He shook him in his bed, then stripped the covers off him.

  “Come on,” Love whispered. “We’ve got to go. Come on. You’ve got to get dressed and be quiet so Nanna doesn’t hear you. We’ve got to do our business.”

  Li’l Pit put his arms over his face and rolled away from him. Love shook him again.

  “It’s time to do your job for Freight, don’t you remember?” Li’l Pit turned back toward him quickly, staring at Love until it came to him. Then he sat up straight like a marionette, shaking his head to wake up. Love handed him the red sweater and slacks from the floor where he’d left them the night before.

  Love was already dressed. He also wore clothes unaffiliated with the crew, a white button-down shirt and black slacks that he had for church. Over that he wore a blue sweater and then Easton’s black leather jacket.

  They went downstairs and ate cereal quickly.

  “What we gonna do?” Li’l Pit asked.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Don’t we need the trunk?”

  “We’ll get it.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Shhh.”

  They washed their dishes quietly, and then Love picked up a paper bag from the kitchen counter and stuffed it inside his jacket.

  “What’s that?”

  “Shhhh. You’re gonna wake up Nanna and spoil the whole thing.” He climbed the stairs again with Li’l Pit behind him. They went back into the room and Love stood at one end of the trunk.

  “We have to carry it. Pick up that end.”

  Li’l Pit grabbed the leather strap and pulled up; he had to grab it with both hands to support the weight.

  “What’s in here?”

  “I filled it with some things we’re going to need. You got that end? You strong enough?”

  Li’l Pit didn’t answer; he just clenched his teeth and pulled Love forward to the stairs. Love hadn’t filled it with much, just some of their clothes and a gun that he’d found in Easton’s old closet when he was hiding the dope from Ruby. But the trunk felt heavy to him too, as if its age made it heavier than it looked. They inched their way down the stairs, knocking into the railing, and making such a racket that Ruby surely would have heard them and woken up if she wasn’t up already and standing behind her door listening to the whole thing.

  “Why we got to take so much?”

  “Shhh.”

  The chest fell from Li’l Pit’s hands and slammed onto the floor. They both laughed.

  “Shhh, pick it up. Come on.”

  “What’s in here?”

  “You’ll see. Come on.” They squeezed their way through the front door and out of the house, dropping the trunk again on the porch. Love went back in briefly and, pretending to take a look around for something forgotten, nodded down the hallway where he hoped Ruby stood, watching through a crack in her door.

  He went back outside, locked up, put the keys deep in his pocket, and checked that the paper bag was in his leather jacket. They carried the trunk single-file down the narrow block, Love walking backward, facing a thin pink-and-orange sherbet sunrise in the east, pulling Li’l Pit along toward the darkness. As soon as they turned the corner, the path widened and they walked side by side, but they still had to work out a common step so the trunk didn’t bounce so much. Love counted off: “Step, together, step. Step, together, step.”

  Ruby had tried to order a cab to pick them up, but none would come to their neighborhood until it was daylight, and they couldn’t afford to wait around. So they had to walk the ten blocks to the West Oakland Greyhound station, straight through the projects where Curse lived. Love thought about going around, but the projects were huge and that meant walking an extra five blocks out of the way, which would feel like a hundred miles with the trunk. Besides, it would still be too early for Curse to be out. The business was 24-7, but Curse was strictly 9 to 5 now.

&nb
sp; They got to Curse’s block and Love pulled them forward. Curse lived on the ground floor where a glittery gold Christmas bell hung, three windows over from the entrance. Love didn’t want to stop. He didn’t even look toward the apartments. Women and men were trickling out of the entrance every few seconds on their way to work, bundled in their jackets and gloves. A man slept on the sidewalk under a piece of cardboard, and they had to step down into the street and around him.

  Love was whispering now, half out of exhaustion, half out of fear that his voice might somehow alert Curse. “Step,” he said. He didn’t say “together” anymore; instead he just paused before repeating “step.”