I scurried onto the sedan’s trunk. Dad would murder me for pulling a stunt like that, but I didn’t care. Well above the crowd now, I cupped my hand over my eyes and craned my neck to see around the raised signs and placards swaying back and forth, blocking my view. Having gotten a glimpse of what was going on, I hopped down and bolted straight for it. I shoved my way under a thick band of yellow tape and into the tightly packed crowd. I was one of hundreds of people packed into that small section of Main Street, struggling for a view of all that was going on. An uproar of catcalls erupted. I strained for another glimpse and jumped to see if I could possibly make out anything more, but buzz cuts and ball caps and ponytails blocked my view. It was no use. The only thing I could make out were the placards clapping, smacking, and knocking up against each other, and the beam-and-cable line of the sign overhead. Glass crunched underfoot as I inched closer to it. I pressed on and squeezed through jostling arms and elbows. The massive and chaotic collection of shifting people up in arms grew more dense with every step, until at last it was impenetrable. The Coca-Cola sign was directly overhead. So I got down on all fours and went for it. I hadn’t crawled five feet, zigzagging my way through a dense thicket of denim jeans, saddle shoes, bobby socks, and high-tops when my arm gave out. A purse crashed down atop my head.
What’d I tell you about creeping around, boy?!
I stood up.
Missus Orbach? Thank God!
She had on a polka-dot dress with pins up and down one side; she must’ve been in the middle of a fitting. She jerked me toward her and pinned me up against the storefront window. I assumed she was trying to shelter me from all the craziness. Mister Rinkel, the tailor, was standing beside us with a tape measure flapping wildly around his neck as he banged on the plate-glass window and yelled, Boooo! Go home!
He was shouting at the people inside, and his constant hollering was distracting me from whatever it was that Missus Orbach was trying to tell me. The neon Coca-Cola sign in the window was turned off and it was dark inside. Directly behind it, one, two, three—four coloreds were sitting at the lunch counter with their arms folded, anchored fast in front of the soda fountain, in neckties and windbreakers. Possibly a fifth, but four that I saw clearly at the counter. Except for the girl. She had on a cardigan and looked like she’d just come back from church. She looked like she’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. I didn’t recognize her, but the rest were with the group who’d been hanging out in front all these weeks. I tried to see if there were any others, but I couldn’t tell. The lights were off, as was the overhead paddle fan. It was jam-packed inside and every single stool in the place had been tipped over, except for the four stools the coloreds occupied. A crowd of whites was pressed against them, and there was so much pushing and hollering that the front window was rattling.
Mister Chambers was on the other side of the counter, in front of the coloreds, stiff-arming its beveled chrome ledge with one arm and shaking his head. Missus Orbach shouted out to him through the glass for him to kick the niggers out. They had no business there; it was time to be done with them already. Mister Rinkel volleyed that they had no respect for the law.
I was thunderstruck. This seemed to be exactly what Dad was talking about when he had said that the world going to hell in a handbasket. I pressed my face to the glass. I knew that S&W burgers were good, but I’d had no idea they were that good. I yanked at Missus Orbach’s sleeve.
You gotta be kidding me! All that for a lousy burger?
Listen, you scraggly-haired love child, I’ve got news for you! Your days here are numbered! I’ve had just about enough of you! You hear me? Numbered! You were born in sin, son. Sin! And I want you nappy-haired mongrels out! All of you! Out!
A shrill peal of laughter erupted. It was deafening. In the next instant, all I could make out was which makes you a love child. A little scraggly-haired, muffin-top, snooping, up-to-no-good love child. And I never want to see you around my house again. Do you hear me? You’ll be shot, no different than the groundhogs and prairie dogs that come sniffing around unwelcome! You hear? You are not wanted here!
Missus Orbach’s face was a yelling pink mass of outrage. She turned abruptly back to the window and pressed her face against the glass. She was worked up something terrible. It was like Mom said—people can’t think clearly when they get that mad. They say things they don’t mean. Mom called her mean-spirited, but I felt a little sorry for her. She couldn’t fool me. I knew she was just scared. That’s what happens when people think that everyone else is as nasty as they are. They get scared.
Missus Krasinski was inside, working herself up into a fit of her own. She struck at that young colored woman’s ear with an open hand, so hard the girl was cradling the side of her face. My God. I stood on my tiptoes. That was a first. I’d never seen a woman hit another woman before. I pitched forward. Missus Orbach had shoved me. Her purse was practically in my face. So shrill was her voice that it cut through the din of the crowd. But try as Missus Orbach might to get my attention, my eyes did not move from that window.
Two, four, six, eight! We don’t wanna integrate!
I was mesmerized. I could see them all now, directly beyond the unlit neon Coca-Cola sign in the window. I was pinned up against the glass. I tried to get that purse out of my face, desperately trying to hold onto the little bit of space I had. Missus Orbach reached over my head and continued banging on the window, shouting in my ear. Go back to Africa!
And as I stood there, mouth open, face not but three inches from the plate-glass window, the darkness inside transposed my reflection over the sign leaning on the sill inside. And as I pulled back from the window and stood there contemplating my reflection amid the chaos swirling around me, I knew that everything that Dad had ever said to me was a lie. Just like I knew that those colored people inside didn’t want to eat with us any more than we wanted to eat with them. Just like I knew that the law was the law and that two wrongs did not make a right. Missus Orbach was right there, telling me to my face. I was a phony.
I wanted to be different from those four colored people. I was sure that I felt different from them. And I sure didn’t look like them. The thing is, no matter what Missus Orbach shouted at me, I wanted to be different from everybody there but her. But that stupid fat old bitch just didn’t realize how similar she and I really were. So I had to prove it. I pressed my face back up against the glass and started banging on the window with my cast so hard sharp pangs shot all the way up to my teeth. I shouted at the top of my lungs. I banged and banged and banged and yelled and banged myself hysterical, until little glistening bubbles of spit spewed from the corners of my mouth.
I got a second look from Missus Orbach. She took me by the shoulder and shoved me in front of herself, up front and center, so all could behold my indignation at the obscene villainy taking place before us.
Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!
Where you belong, you goddamned orangutan! No apes allowed!
Missus Orbach pushed me forward. Lookit here! Do you see this? Even this little scraggly-haired mongrel wants you out! Go on, Huey! Let them know what you really think! Say it loud and say it proud! Say what you were saying just a minute ago! Nice and loud, so all can hear!
Missus Orbach slammed me against the window. Louder, Huey! That’s not loud enough! I want them to hear you all the way up in New York!
Missus Orbach wasn’t going to be happy until I went straight through the glass. My arm was hanging limp at my side now. Every time I smacked it against the window, an electric shock shot through my entire body. Inside, Missus Krasinski was upending a sugar jar over the colored girl’s hair. She was shaking it out furiously, like it couldn’t come out fast enough. The colored girl’s hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She bowed her head and shielded her eyes, and all that sugar just cascaded down onto the counter and floor. I banged on the glass and yelled and banged and yelled and banged so hard that even my good arm started to hurt. The col
ored men seated on either side of that colored girl weren’t doing anything to help her. They were just sitting there, looking straight at the pastry case, stoic. Cowards!
She was getting the brunt of it, like the wounded antelope of the herd, the one the crowd had singled out. Which was alarming. I could see the reflection of the two colored men seated beside her in the wall mirror mounted behind the counter. Missus Krasinski clenched her teeth and snapped up the mayonnaise dispenser, gripped it in both hands, and unraveled a long, spiraling yarn over each of their heads. Jigaboos!
I banged on the window hard and shouted at the top of my lungs, but no matter how loud or how much I shouted or what I said, the four colored men and that girl remained seated, eyes forward, arms folded, just sitting there, silent, still, and passive. I couldn’t hold back Missus Orbach. She was shoving me against the window. It was about to break. I hollered to Missus Orbach that I needed some breathing room.
Inside, Missus Krasinski angled herself between two of the coloreds and tugged at the backs of their shirt collars amid a flurry of hands lashing out. People were swinging and punching at everything in sight. They tugged, ripped, clawed, and tore at their clothes. One of the colored men was wrenched from his stool. He struggled to hold on. Someone blindsided another one. He winced, checked for blood, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His eyes were filled with panic. He pulled his jacket over his head, but it did little to shield him from the onslaught of punches showering down on him. Someone wrenched him from his stool, and he teetered over onto the floor. I lost sight of him as a gang of teenagers swarmed over him and seemed to swallowed him up like in a feeding frenzy.
I cheered. The celebration among those of us gathered around the window and in the doorway and on the sidewalk echoed down the street. It was electric. I wiped the fog from the window in disbelief. I stopped banging and just took in all the craziness. There appeared to be a fifth colored man seated at the counter. I cupped my hand over my eyes. My lips parted in disbelief. Toby?
He was sitting on the farthest stool from the window. He must have been obscured by the man who had been seated to his left, the one who was now in a tussle on the floor. Toby was covered with every variety of condiment in the place. He had one hand clamped onto the counter, holding on as if for dear life, and did not budge except to shield his face and hold on to his seat as all hell broke loose around him. He was as dirty as refuse, as abused as sin, and appeared as stiff and unbending as God’s will. I was mesmerized.
Sweet mother of God. Toby’s alive!
I jerked at Missus Orbach’s purse. That got her attention.
You’re not gonna believe this! Toby isn’t dead! They got him inside! Don’t ask me how, but they do! I tell you, that’s him! He’s inside! I see him! Look! He’s right there! C’mon! I gotta get him outta there!
I didn’t know how he’d done it, or why he’d done it. All I knew was that he’d somehow done it. There was not a doubt in my mind. For there could not be two men on this planet who shared his indomitable spirit. Missus Orbach looked at me like I was talking in tongues. On the other side of the window, the man lowered his hand from his face. It was not Toby. I backed away from Missus Orbach, turned on my heels, and ran.
XVI
DAD WAS IN THE SHED, repairing stack poles. He let out a What the— when he saw me.
I cut him off. It’s okay. I just slipped.
I explained that I fell on my arm going down a gravel embankment, on my way to the river. How I’d seen a bunch of kids playing on inner tubes. It looked like fun, so I’d decided to join them. Dad knelt down and looked over my face and inspected the green stains and red splotches covering my cast. He shook his head with concern.
By where Artie fishes?
Farther down.
Where the geese nest?
Down more. Where we saw Mister Slappery’s terrier doing it with Mister Marnin’s collie—up against the tree, where no one but us could see. Remember?
Oh. Well, I know what it’s like for you boys. You’re growing by the day—don’t know where your body starts and ends half the time. Whaddya say we get some ice for this?
Dad wiped the dirt and tears from my face, suggested that I not tell Mom, then led me inside. Miss Della was on her way out. She walked out the front door, down the steps, and out the driveway without saying a word. Mom stood in the doorway quietly watching her first hair appointment in weeks disappear through the elms lining our drive.
We didn’t have any ice in the house, so I dug out a hand towel and wet it with cold water. I could hear Mom out on the stoop telling Dad that she didn’t care how little things had cooled down in town, Tobias Wetherall Muncie had never done anything but good, and that no matter what Dad’s opinion of colored people, it was important to show our respect to folks who had been good to us.
Dad didn’t think “it” necessary. Mom acknowledged that “it” would be awkward, but insisted. I had no idea what they were talking about but I was inclined to side with Dad—Mom tended to overdo things. There was a moment of quiet. I headed for my room and slipped into bed with that wet hand towel draped over my face. I was a mess. I pulled the covers up to my chin and just as I was starting to drift off, I was startled awake by a door slamming shut and someone snapping, Fine. I’ll drive there myself.
I lay in bed the next morning with the vague memory of Dad having come in during the night and given me some aspirin. And of Mom asking if I was sure I didn’t want any dinner, and me answering, But you don’t know how to drive.
I’ll learn. So help me God, I’ll teach myself.
But where would you even go?
• • •
THE NEXT COUPLE of days were a blur. All I remember is being startled awake one morning by the sound of Mom barging into my room. She riffled through my dresser and set out a pile of clothes, then disappeared into the kitchen with my white button-down flapping behind her like a flag. My arm was still aching, but at least the swelling had gone down enough to inspire the belief that the worst was past. Dad put two rubber bands around my cast to keep it from slipping off and called it good as new.
I changed into a clean undershirt and reached for the tie that Mom had set atop my dresser, fumbled it into a slipknot, then slung it around my neck. The look of horror on Mom’s face when she walked past my room was worse than the time she’d discovered I’d used the last few drops of her eight-year-old bottle of Chanel perfume that Dad had given her for high-school graduation.
She jerked it from around my neck and told me I wasn’t ready for a real tie yet. I left the house that morning in a short-sleeved button-down and clip-on tie, carrying an aluminum baking tin as heavy as a cat. Mom teetered down the steps in pressed hair, heels, and a dark dress that covered her ankles and buttoned at the neck. Dad was at the top of the steps in his coveralls and boots, checking his wristwatch. It wasn’t until we all piled in the truck that I realized I didn’t even know where Toby had lived.
Our driveway let out to a road of packed dirt. The open field across it was ours, too. Dad turned right. Half a mile up, our field ended and the Orbachs’ began. Dad eased right at the first turnoff, then continued along a stretch that ran parallel with a rutabaga field, and a little farther up, their big house came into view. Then came the Schaefers’ fields. Their peanuts had been out of the ground a month already and two dozen convicts were laying pulled peanut vines out in neatly lined rows. Armed guards were standing on the field’s perimeter, watching as they worked. Dad slowed on the appearance of our turnoff, which we were approaching from the back side. He was taking the most roundabout way possible—claimed that it was the easiest way to sidestep the trouble in town. We pulled back onto Cordele Road, and as we passed the Camelot, Dad noted that Mister Abrams’s fortunes had sure taken a turn for the worse in recent weeks. Mom wasn’t concerned with Mister Abrams.
It won’t be long now until they bury that poor boy.
Della told you that? That kooky old maid. Her family tree may as well have r
oots in everyone’s front yard, for all she knows about who has done what to whom.
Mom gazed off to the side of the road. She didn’t seem to care about anything Dad had to say as we passed the charred remains of Goolsbee’s shop.
Mark my word. People won’t forget.
Dad clenched the steering wheel and we crossed the river. I leaned over Mom and rolled up her window. The stink of low tide passed by the time we emerged from the chuh chuh chuh chuh of the covered bridge. A procession of peach trees flitted past, and it took all of five family orchards before I realized that she had been talking about Toby. A checkerboard-style arrangement of trees passed by. Eventually they thinned out and were replaced with a span of flat pastures crisscrossed with haystacks. Dad looked over and winked.
You know you’re from Akersburg if you like the smell of manure. Do you like the smell of manure?
Mom turned away. Me, too. Dad sighed and said that it was just as well to get the condolence call taken care of. Suppose it’s better this way.
Couldn’t live with myself otherwise.
Dad looked over but said nothing. Asphalt turned into packed dirt, and somewhere along a tight, winding back road scattered with old leaves, we pulled in behind a tractor leaning in a drainage ditch. Mom stepped into the reedy grass, careful not to trample the wildflowers. I got out at her prompting and stood on the side of the road.
They Come in All Colors Page 16
