“It’s my pleasure to do those things,” she told me, tucking the covers around my shoulders.
On the Monday after my birthday, Daddy came home from work with the Bennettsville Times. Excited, he showed me and Mama and Aunt Greer my new article. I called Annie Jane over to see, and the four of us crowded around Daddy. Looking between his hands, I saw my story at the bottom of the front page. In big letters it said: “Living Without Sight.” In small letters it said, “Another article by Marlboro County’s favorite columnist, Little Darby Carmichael, with editorial assistance from Evette.”
I asked my daddy, “What’s a columnist?”
He answered, “It’s a newspaper writer who writes personal opinions and stories.”
“I’m a columnist kinda newspaper writer then?”
“Sure are.” Aunt Greer laughed.
I asked, “Did you like my story, Daddy?”
“I was left breathless,” he declared. “It’s really an accomplishment.”
“You think?” I asked, and started jumping up and down.
Annie Jane told me, “Congratulations, child.”
Mama finished reading and shook her head. “Amazing,” she said, her throat and eyes clogged with tears. She reached over and held my cheeks in her hands. Letting go, she gave me a nice soft hug. “I’m proud of you. You’ve got a special gift. You certainly do.”
McCall walked in, and I yapped, “My new columnist came out.”
“You mean your column?” he snapped back.
I was confused.
Aunt Greer explained, “A columnist writes a column.”
“So what I did is called a column?”
“Yeah, love,” she told me as she read.
I turned back to McCall. “Everyone thinks my column’s real good.”
“Who cares,” he mumbled.
“McCall!” Mama barked at him. “Be good!”
Playing innocent, he declared, “I’m being good.”
I asked my mama, “Can I go show Evette?”
“Right now?”
“It’ll only be a second, Mama. Please?”
Staring at me, she didn’t try to hide her frustration. “You don’t dawdle, Darby,” she said sharply, “and take King.”
The nice thing was, when Evette saw her name alongside mine, she got so excited she gave me a hug that nearly cracked my back. It was perfect.
A lot of people liked my second article more than the first, including the teachers I eat lunch with. They praised me about ten times, which was something I didn’t mind. Plus, my daddy said that everyone who went into his store gushed over it. At home and at school I was feeling pretty important until, on the Thursday after my birthday, while Miss Burstin wrote on the blackboard, Beth gave me a note. Unfolding it, I read, “You got to come home with me. Mercury is so sad for not seeing you for almost two weeks. That’s what Chester said.”
Thinking about that goat, I wrote back, “Are you playing?” But Beth never got my question. While my head was down, Miss Burstin had walked away from the blackboard and was standing in front of me. She grabbed up my note and scolded me good. “Darby Carmichael, I’d like to think that you of all people would try and set a good example for others.” Ripping the paper into a hundred pieces, she sprinkled it into the garbage can.
When school was over, I got up and rushed for the parking lot and our Chevrolet. I wanted to go straight home and hide under the sweet, blue sky of our farm. But Beth caught up with me downstairs. “Darby, aren’t you gonna come make Mercury happy?” she asked.
Breathing hard, I stared at her. “Is that really true about him?”
“Yeah, it is,” she promised. “Even Chester said you gotta come make his goat feel better.”
I wanted to leave, but I knew I couldn’t. I liked Mercury so much I was stuck. “Okay, I’ll stay.”
“Mercury’s gonna be glad,” Beth told me.
Walking to her house, I explained that because I was semifamous for writing articles in the paper, I felt especially bad about getting caught passing notes.
Beth told me to stop worrying.
“You think?”
“It’s true. Miss Burstin shouldn’t’ve said you should set a good example. That wasn’t very nice. You’re still just a kid.”
I thought about it but couldn’t exactly decide if Beth was right. We walked on some more, and I asked, “Did you like my birthday?”
She nodded. “It was nice.”
“You didn’t like Evette, though, did you?”
“I like her all right.”
“She’s smart and funny.”
Beth didn’t answer.
“You should hear her tell stories about her brothers. Once she said they were walking down a dirt road, and they passed a snake who was sitting in a ditch, and her little brother stayed behind and picked it up and swang it like a rope. He tossed it around their older brother’s neck, and their older brother nearly screamed his head off from fright. He was worried it was a poisonous snake. As soon as he found out it wasn’t, he wrastled their little brother into the dirt and made him eat a handful.”
“Ugh, I woulda fainted if somebody threw a snake around my neck,” Beth declared.
“Me, too,” I told her.
She laughed.
“You see how fun Evette is?”
She didn’t say anything.
At Beth’s house, Chester stayed in his room while we brushed Mercury’s soft coat. Stepping in place, Mercury seemed happy I was there. I asked Beth, “Do you really think he missed me?”
“That’s what Chester thought.”
“Good,” I said, scratching the area between Mercury’s eyes and down his big nose.
When we were finished brushing Mercury, we went inside. A few minutes later, Chester and Mercury clip-clopped down the roadway and disappeared around the side of the house. Watching them go, I wished Beth’s brother would start talking to me again. I missed hearing him explain how to gig frogs and play football. Also, he knows the best ghost stories and tells them in a strange voice that makes the hair on my neck stand as straight as pins.
Playing dolls, me and Beth decided that the worst-dressed one went crazy and the two prettier ones had to send her to an insane hospital. After a while, the prettier dolls came to visit her, but the boss at the hospital was so mean that he wouldn’t let them talk. The two pretty dolls could hear the worst-dressed one crying for help inside the gate, and it was on account of her crying that the pretty dolls broke her out of the hospital and hid her under Beth’s bed.
After playing, Beth and me had some lemonade and walked down to Crooked Creek. We tossed stones to see who could throw the farthest. Beth won, but she didn’t say anything because we don’t like to pick winners. Then we went back up the hill and walked toward Carmichael Dry Goods.
Going along, though, Boog and Shoog ran by us, stopped, and came back. Excited, Boog said, “Beth, did you hear somebody just threw a brick through your daddy’s office window?”
“By mistake?” Beth asked.
“Course not,” he told her.
Beth started trotting, and I chased after her. With Boog and Shoog right behind us, we shot around the Lewis & Breeden drugstore and saw all the people and the sheriff alongside Mr. Fairchild’s window. As I searched the crowd for my daddy, my eyes stopped on Mr. Dunn, who stood in back with his giant arms crossed.
Talking with the sheriff, Mr. Fairchild was pointing at the glass on the ground and the busted blinds that were hanging crumpled.
Behind me, Boog whispered, “Everyone around here is saying it was the KKK.”
Spinning about, I looked right at him.
He whispered, “That’s short for the Ku Klux Klan.”
I already knew that, and my heart nearly stopped. I turned back to watch Beth weave through the crowd to her daddy. Hugging him, she started crying so that handsome Mr. Fairchild crouched down and lifted her up.
The crowd grew bigger and Mr. Fairchild kept talking to Sheriff McDonne
ll. Finally, when they were done, people came around and patted Mr. Fairchild’s shoulders, wishing him well. He smiled and laughed and put Beth down. Shaking hands with friends, he lifted his head and was blotting his face with a handkerchief when he spotted Mr. Dunn. From where I was standing, it seemed like Mr. Dunn’s sharp chin hypnotized Mr. Fairchild or something, because Beth’s daddy started toward him right off. Yelling things that I couldn’t hear, because I couldn’t hear anything for some reason, Mr. Fairchild pushed through the crowd. Like stuff happening in a silent movie, he struggled to get hold of Mr. Dunn as Mr. Dunn worked to grab him. Both of them looked crazy.
With a hand on his gun, the sheriff calmed the crowd. Then he must have told us all to go home, because everyone started leaving. Alongside Boog and Shoog, I walked like a zombie across the street to the Carmichael Block.
In front of my daddy’s store, my hearing came back. Shoog scratched into the armpit of his coat, and mumbled, “Wonder what that note said?”
“What note?” I asked, feeling only half-awake.
“The note that was strung to that brick.”
“There was a note?”
“God, Darby,” Boog hollered, “you got your ears packed with wax? Everyone was talkin’ about it.”
“Well, I didn’t hear anything.” Turning away, I went into the store. From behind the cash register, my daddy looked at me.
“Darby, sweetheart, what’s all the fuss? People’ve been rushing past the store for ten minutes.”
I answered. “Somebody threw a brick through Mr. Fairchild’s window.”
Rightly surprised, my father thought on that before asking, “Anything else?”
“People were saying it was the Ku Klux Klan.”
Daddy shook his head. “Good Lord.”
“Boog and Shoog said a note was attached to a brick, but I didn’t hear what it said.”
“Hope this don’t tear Marlboro County in half.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he told me. But I knew it was something.
After dinner, our telephone rang, which was real rare. Daddy answered it in the hallway. Shortly, his feet clicked on the stairs and he stood in my doorway.
“Darby?” he said, holding a glass of water.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“You get to have Beth stay for the weekend.”
Excited, I put down my book. “Really?” I said, smiling.
“Yeah,” he answered weakly. Then, looking like he was thinking real hard, he turned away.
On Friday after school, me and Beth sat in the back seat of the Chevrolet and watched McCall’s friends leap off the car. Once we were unloaded of boys, we picked up speed, flicking up rocks against the fenders. Outside of town, we shot along between the fields and distant, distant trees that remind me of pussy willows brushing back and forth. Driving, McCall glanced into the rearview mirror and asked Beth a question. “Are your parents scared for you to stay home?”
She answered, “It’s just that they wanna know who threw the brick.”
“What’d the note say?”
“Daddy didn’t tell.”
McCall drove on, then asked, “You think your daddy could punch out Mr. Dunn?”
“Yeah,” Beth told him. “I expect he could beat up anybody ’cause he boxed when he went to the Citadel college.”
To be nice, I grabbed one of Beth’s hands.
She squeezed mine back.
McCall asked, “You think it was the KKK?”
Beth shrugged. “I suppose.”
McCall banged a palm against the steering wheel. “Do you know what your daddy done to make ’em mad?”
“I don’t,” she answered, her voice so soft it caught up in the breeze and seemed nearly to disappear.
At Ellan, me and Beth marched up to my room and changed from our school clothes. Collecting some books and paper off my shelf, we carried them downstairs, where Annie Jane gave us sugar cookies for a snack. Pulling on our coats, we dashed down to the backyard, where we went into the Darby and Beth School. Shutting the door, we swept the floor. Then we wiped down two bashed school desks we pretended our imaginary students sat in. Up at the front of the class, we put the books and paper on a rickety table and got ready to play like we were in a schoolhouse full of kids.
Taking a piece of chalk, Beth wrote arithmetic problems on a shard of broken blackboard.
With a stick, I tapped on one of the desks. “Attention. Attention, class. Hey! Hey now, Rodney Phipps, you best listen when I’m talking. You hear? You of all people. You didn’t do your arithmetic again, so you shouldn’t oughta be wasting your time.”
“That’s right,” Beth said, “you’re gonna fail now. We got no choice. As hard as your mama and daddy work to bring you up right, it’s a shame you’re letting ’em down.”
Circling one of the desks, I talked in a sweet voice. “Now, Emily, you’re a different story. Last night I looked over your test from yesterday, and I see that you got everything right. Isn’t that something? See what studying your homework can do for you? It can make you real smart.”
Beth said, “Both me and Miss Carmichael are real proud of you. You’re sitting pretty.” Turning around fast, she scowled like she smelled something crummy. “On the other hand, Timothy-Lester, you don’t ever seem to learn your multiplication tables. They aren’t all that hard, but you can’t ever get ’em.”
I declared, “There’s a real simple reason, Miss Fairchild. It’s ’cause he daydreams too much. He’s always looking out the window.”
“He always is,” Beth agreed.
We played that way for about a half hour, scolding and complimenting our ten imaginary students whose names we’d made up when we were little kids. Then we heard Ellan’s back door open and shut, and, after a few seconds, McCall tapped at our schoolhouse. Poking his head in, he whispered, “You wanna go with me to spy on Mr. Dunn’s farm?”
“No,” I said, shocked he’d do something like that. To me, that whole place was getting more and more creepy.
But Beth put down her piece of chalk and answered, “I wanna, yeah.”
So I was stuck. On account of Beth being a guest, I had to do what she wanted.
Hurrying catty-corner toward the woods, the three of us passed into the trees and snuck along behind bushes till we got to the drainage ditch between Mr. Dunn’s and my daddy’s property. Stopping, we looked way up the long, bush-lined ditch. The highway was in the distance, and I could see people and mules in the fields beyond.
Since we were stopped, I tried to explain why we shouldn’t go spying on Mr. Dunn. I said, “He could sic a dog on us and beat us to bits and shoot at us and call the sheriff and —”
McCall stopped me. “He can’t do nothing like that stuff. He can’t knock us around. Besides, we’ll stay on Carmichael property.”
Beth whispered, “My daddy thinks he threw the brick at his window.”
McCall turned, and told her, “We should try to see him doing something illegal.”
She nodded.
Climbing down into the ditch, we scampered alongside the still water. Slipping and sliding, my shoes got caked with mud while the hem of my white dress turned orange. Ahead of me, Beth’s dress was the same way. McCall’s knickers and socks were plastered with clay. Stepping over big roots and fallen tree trunks, we kept our eyes on Mr. Dunn’s side of the ditch till we got so we could see the top of his house. From there, we followed McCall up the Carmichael side of the bank and scampered in behind thick bushes with leaves that look like fans. Peeking through thin spots, it surprised me that Mr. Dunn’s place didn’t seem scary or bad or anything. Instead, it was clean and white and glowing in the sunlight.
Shimmying up a tree, McCall got into its branches so that he could see better. He whispered down, “I got my eye on the chicken coop where he caught that boy stealing.”
One of the help, carrying a washtub full of water, came out from the back of the house. She dumped it onto the dusty
ground. Wiping at her head with a wrist, she turned extra-slow and went back inside.
A dog barked from behind one of Mr. Dunn’s outbuildings, and I heard other noises. Following the sound, I spotted a big cage with two peacocks in it. One opened up its tail feathers, but instead of being beautiful, the feathers looked like burned stalks of grass. A calico cat scampered by, and a black man came from between some buildings, hauling wood toward the rear of Mr. Dunn’s place. Stopping, he looked over toward us. He kept his eyes scanning for a time before he quit and went on.
“Did he see us?” Beth asked me softly.
“Naw,” I told her. “Some people can tell when they’re getting looked at, but he didn’t see us.” After a while I asked, “How long do you wanna stay?”
“Till we see Mr. Dunn.”
“We might not. He might go in the front door.”
“That’s true.”
“His house doesn’t look so mean, huh?”
“Not like I thought,” she admitted.
“He’s still got an outhouse and a hand water pump in the backyard.”
“Guess he’s old-fashioned,” Beth whispered.
As quick as a squirrel, McCall scampered down from the tree. “I didn’t see nothing good,” he told us. “They must be off somewheres. Let’s go home.”
During the night, it rained. In the morning the air was hot again. The weather changes a lot around here. Sometimes the summer doesn’t give up till after Christmas. Following breakfast, me and Beth went outside and set up penny peeks before getting out my pole-vaulting stick. I tried to show her how to do it a few times, but she wasn’t any good. She kept trying and trying, but she couldn’t swing her legs over the tiniest fence.
“Let’s stop,” I said to her.
“Okay,” she agreed.
I could tell she was a little sad, so I asked, “Are you worried about your daddy and mama?”
“A little.”
“Sorry,” I told her.
“It’s okay,” she said. Then she walked close to me, and whispered, “Also . . . also, do you think McCall likes me a little?” Dropping her eyes toward the ground, Beth played with her dress against her knees.
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