He stayed on his knees for a few seconds, and we both tried to catch our breath. The kids were yelling for him to get up. There were saying things like, “You can’t let a Tom beat you, man!”
I turned and wiped the blood from my face. I saw Patty sitting still now, unbothered because the boys were too caught up in the fight. She seemed to be in a trance. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and my body shuddered with hatred and as I turned back to finish him off, which I knew was the only way to free Patty. Taliferro was standing up with a knife in his hands.
Someone yelled, “Taliferro’s got a blade!”
A teacher screamed, “That’s enough, goddamn it! The police are on the way!”
But I couldn’t have cared less. I was too wrapped up in my vengeance. “I’m not afraid of that knife,” I said because I truly wasn’t. “Come on. Kill me!”
He lunged at me but missed by a lot. He lunged a second time, but he was too tired, and he was slow. I let the knife pass by me and nailed him with another right, which dropped him to his knees again.
There was a locker behind him that had come open during the fight. I kicked Taliferro in the face, and he dropped the knife as he fell flat onto the floor. I grabbed him and yanked him up, and then I rammed his head into the locker, and the sharp, steel edges cut his ears as his head went in. I closed the door around his neck and with all the strength I had left, I punched the locker door. Taliferro went limp, and blood ran down the side of his head and neck.
I stepped back to get out of the way. When I turned, the hall was clearing. Everything was now happening in slow motion. Students disgusted by the gross ending to the fight were screaming and running. Their mouths barely moved when they spoke. The words all came out like yawns. When they ran, it seemed like they were trying to run up the steepest hill. As I continued to back away, a teacher pointed at me and in an awfully slow drawl yelled, “You’re in a lot of trouble, young man!” He crouched in a linebacker-ready position as if to keep me from escaping. Other teachers ran to Taliferro. I turned a little more, and I saw Patty, sitting on the floor where they’d left her. She was still crying.
I turned my back on the teacher and helped Patty to her feet. We stood there staring into each other’s eyes. Then we hugged, and though I knew that I loved her, it was only then that I knew what 100-proof love was really like. It became tangible, and as I held her, I held it. I fully realized the depth of my feelings for Patty Cunningham, and it was incredibly intense. More intense than the knowledge that, after that day, there was no chance my family would ever accept me again. Nothing meant anything to me except the fact that her eyes told me I was loved. And for the first time since Mama Jennie, I felt deep love without conditions.
We held hands as we walked toward the principal’s office. Paramedics rushed past us on their way to Taliferro. Kids stood in the doorways, whispering the incident into Canaan High School legend. I turned to Patty when I saw the principal and the police running toward us.
A second later, a policeman ripped me away from Patty, and she screamed my name as I was slammed to the floor and my hands were yanked behind me to be cuffed. He cuffed my ankles too. Then he grabbed me by the feet and dragged me through the halls to the principal’s office. I had to hold my head up the entire time so that my face wouldn’t become one gigantic floor burn. Patty ran behind me yelling at them to stop. They didn’t, and one of the cops turned to her and told her to shut her “nigger-loving mouth.”
At the office, I lay like a bug on the floor. My neck was killing me. They just left me there as people came and went doing business. One policeman kept a foot in my back while they called our parents. They reached Patty’s mother first, and she said she was on her way. When they reached Daddy, he told them to do what they had to do. He’d come by the jail in the morning if he had time.
The policeman who stood with his foot in my back uncuffed my feet, picked me up and walked me outside to put me in a waiting police wagon. But when we were out in the pouring rain, he said he’d forgotten something, and he took me over to the flagpole in front of the main building and cuffed my hands behind my back and around the pole. I fell to my knees as he left me in a freezing February rain. Before long, I was shivering badly.
Patty came running out because she had seen me through the main office window. She ran to me and hugged me tightly, trying yet again to keep me from falling off the edge of my dignity.
“Evan,” she whispered into my ear. “Oh, Evan.”
I looked up and saw the faces in windows of the surrounding buildings looking down at us. I hated them all and wished I could do to them what I had done to Taliferro.
“I’m so sorry, Evan,” Patty continued.
“No, I’m so sorry. I grew up here. I knew what this could do to us, and I didn’t think clearly. It’s just that you liked me, and I didn’t—no, I mean, I couldn’t let it go.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did something wrong because I’m going to lose you, right?”
She didn’t answer. She just hugged me tighter, and I closed my eyes to concentrate on what I was feeling. I was trying hard to imprint upon my memory the feeling of her cheek against mine, her body against my body, and the soft way she now cradled the back of my neck. I tried hard to smell her hair, but it was different because of the rain, and it upset me that I’d missed the chance to place this into my memory. I had loved the smell of Patty’s hair.
We just stayed like that for I don’t know how long. It was obvious that the policeman hadn’t left anything. He was simply having fun punishing the uppity nigger. Patty, I knew, realized this and she tried to cover me entirely to protect me from belittling eyes and to protect my quickly deteriorating pride. I loved her for trying, but she could not help me. You see, the thing about shame is that it grows from within, and only the person feeling it can put it to rest.
Patty’s mother arrived before the police returned. “She’s here,” I told Patty as I gazed over her shoulder. She hugged me tighter, but her effort was in vain. I already felt her drifting away, and I began to feel all numb inside.
“I love you so much, Patty.”
She smiled. “I love you, too, Evan Walls. Moving to this horrible place was worth the chance to have you in my life. I will never, ever forget you.”
Patty still hadn’t looked at her mother, who stopped just a few feet from her car. She was just standing there in the rain, taking in the moment and, I think, feeling for her daughter. I was sure I saw a mother’s pain in her eyes. Though she didn’t agree with what Patty was doing, she cared enough not to interfere in this final moment.
I looked at Patty. “Keep your shoulders strong and smooth,” I said.
She held my face in both of her hands, and I longed to hold her. I began to cry because I could not. She kissed me one more time, and for sure that is imprinted in my memory.
“And no extra baggage,” she said as she stood.
I nodded, and Patty backed away. She walked backward until her mother came and turned her toward the car. It was the last time I saw Patty Cunningham face-to-face. And as they drove away, fading into the rain, I remembered being over at Bojack’s sitting in his pickup and listening to him sing the blues. “The sky is crying,” he would sing. “Just look at the tears roll down the street.”
I lifted my head to the sky and saw the flag looking back down at me. I was thinking, God bless America, land of the free and home of the brave. And I was laughing when I was caught by surprise by the policeman who, along with his partner, unhooked me from the flagpole. He cuffed my hands behind my back again and pulled me to the police wagon. They shoved me inside, and I sat up on a bench. Across from me was Lost Boy.
Here is what my life had come to.
I had sympathy for Lost Boy and tried hard not to think of myself as a better human being than he was, but I couldn’t help feeling a huge measure of disgrace for ending up at the same level as this poor soul, who was in the process of lecturing the ceili
ng of the wagon. I wondered how long it would be before I was talking to the statues and squirrels and eating black snakes. I fell on my knees and screamed as the wagon began to move. I kicked the walls and the floor. I rolled from front to back, with him yelling at the ceiling and laughing.
I was still on the floor, but calm by the time we reached the jail. The policemen were smiling when they opened the doors. One of them said, “Damn, I thought you niggers had done killed each other back here. And it wouldn’t have been no skin offa my back, just so you know.”
Minutes later they opened a cell door, took off my cuffs, pushed me inside and slammed me into the brick wall face-first. I barely felt a thing. I only noticed blood on my sweater, which dripped from the scrape on my cheek I got as I slid down the wall.
I rested there with my arms wrapped around my knees, cradling them against my chest. My chin rested on my knees and I stared down the hallway to the front of the jail waiting for I don’t know what. A few minutes later, they brought Lost Boy in, put him in the cell next to mine, and told him to dry out. I lay my head back and closed my eyes as he began talking to something in his cell. That’s when the situation caught up to me, and I began mumbling to myself.
“You’re in jail, damn it. You are in jail!”
There would be no crowd outside screaming for my release. Reverend Walker was probably sitting at home laughing, if he knew. Hell, my own parents weren’t even there to get me, and I wondered how long they would let me sit.
Then I thought of Patty and how I had watched her get into her mother’s car and leave my life. Later, I fell asleep as I tried to recall the feeling of Patty holding me for the last time.
•••
When I awoke, Lost Boy was gone. I looked out of the little window at the top of the cell and saw that it was dark out. I got up and used the toilet and thought about what it would be like to be in a room like this for any number of years. Then bolts slipped and clanked. Doors opened, and shoes echoed off the tiled floor. I smiled when I saw Bojack walking behind the deputy.
He took off his sunglasses, looked at me, and shook his head. He rubbed his hand over my head and cheek where the blood had dried.
“Least y’all coulda cleaned him up a bit,” he said to the officer.
“I ain’t nobody’s nurse,” the officer replied. “If he didn’t go around trying to kill people, he wouldn’t be in here all busted up.”
Bojack didn’t dignify the comment by responding, although I could tell he was angered by it. He put his hands under my arms and lifted me up. Then he put an arm around my waist and helped me out to his truck. He went back in to get my wallet, watch, and belt.
I sat quietly and thought about my brief incarceration. As much as I wished for it to be so, it hadn’t been a dream. But I should really have a criminal record, I thought. I began to wonder how we’d just walked out of the police station without a word to anyone. They hadn’t taken a mugshot or fingerprints. When Bojack returned I asked why.
“My brother, you is one lucky cat. The wheels of justice just drove right on by you. First of all, you know they ain’t thanking about wasting their time when two colored bucks get to fighting. Throw some cold water on you like a couple of wild dogs and kick yo’ ass to the curb. You ain’t worth the paperwork. On top of that, it’s like you did this po-lice station a favor. They been hating on Taliferro Pitts ever since the church mob rescued him. Hell, you might even be a hero to them. Naw, you ain’t got nothing to worry about.”
I let my head fall back on the seat. “I’m not sure I should care, but I want to know. What happened to Taliferro?”
“They took him to the hospital, but he won’t there but for a couple of hours. Lot of blood from his head and cut up his ear real bad. They stitched his ass up and sent him home. But I can double-dee guarantee you one thang.”
“What’s that?”
“He ain’t gone be bothering you no more. From what I hear, you scared everybody, which mean ain’t nobody gone be giving you no more trouble. You just lay low and you be living in high cotton.”
“I can do that,” I replied. “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do all along.”
When he pulled away from the jail, he said he was sorry I had to sit in that place for so long. He said he came as soon as he heard about it and found out that Mama and Daddy had left me there. He went to see Daddy and they got into a fistfight; he said he’d given Daddy a taste of his own damn medicine. I couldn’t say that I felt sorry for Daddy, but I did start to have second thoughts about going home. Jail began to look pretty good.
I nodded off to sleep again even though my house was only a ten-minute ride from downtown Canaan. I woke up when the truck stopped and we were sitting in front of Bojack’s house.
“You’re not taking me home?”
He looked back at me and took off his sunglasses again. “From now on, this is your home.”
Turns out that Mama and Daddy had all they could take, and they’d finally thrown me out. That’s why Bojack had fought with Daddy. Because he was abandoning his child.
“Yeah,” he said. “When I got to your house, thanking I was gone check on you, I find all your clothes and shit throwed out in the path. And when I went into the house and said, ‘What’s up with this?’ Augustus tells me that you won’t there, and you won’t coming back. That you could rot in jail far as they was concerned. He said they didn’t want to see you again. Ever. So I told his ass what I thought of that and then I introduced him to this.” He held up his fist.
My head was spinning. I just sat there listening and thinking, I can’t believe that this is all happening. I just can’t.
“I’m going to leave,” I said. “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to run away. Maybe I’ll try to find Mark.”
“How you gone even start to do that?”
“I don’t quite know. I can’t think properly yet.”
“Well, I guess I can thank for you. You ain’t going nowhere. You gone stay right here with me.”
“I can’t do that to you. Look what happened with the people who made me. The people who were supposed to love me no matter what. Look what having me around brought to them.”
“Well, I ain’t them. I am gone stand by you,” he said. “You look at me now.”
I did.
“I am telling you this. I sat on that porch lo those many years ago, and I lit a fire and set you on a road. I helped bring you to this, and I am not gone let it all go to waste now. You hear me?”
I nodded, and he continued.
“It’s my fault, all of this mess, and I shoulda stood up earlier and not let thangs come at you like they done. I guess I thought I knew your folks better than I did. I thought that in the end, they would see the light and do right by both you and Mark. Now he gone, and you want to give up on your life, too. No, I don’t thank so. You gone live with me, and I’m gonna be your mama and your daddy. I am gone make sure you stay on track, getting them good grades, and working your way out of Canaan. You are gone study, play football, and graduate if I have to break both your legs, and take you to class in a wheelchair, and beat the shit outta anybody that got anythang nasty they want to say.
“No sir, Evan Walls. Not every black face in this messed-up town is gone let you down. They ain’t gone be no more Lost Boys in Canaan if I can help it. I love you, and I’m gone show you that.”
I smiled and nodded. “What do you think Aunt Mary will say when she finds out that I’m going to be in the house?”
“Mary who?” he asked.
That night, his guest room became my room, and now, when I think back to a comfortable place in Canaan, it’s not the cornfield. It’s not my circle in the woods, because there was just too much pain in the air there. It’s not my parents’ home. It’s that room in the back of Bojack’s place.
•••
After everything went down, Mama rarely left the house. Daddy only went to work and back. They stopped going to church, which was really something, becau
se Daddy loved being on the deacon board. And during the upcoming spring and summer, the porch sessions never got started and faded away for good.
After Patty, my parents were never a part of my life. I saw them from time to time, Mama in the grocery store, or Daddy in his car as we passed each other on the road. But nothing resembling love ever passed between us. I know they never forgave me.
I played two more seasons at Canaan High, without having to worry about Taliferro Pitts. He never returned to school. After he recovered from the fight, he went to work at the packing plant.
I spent lunch hours out behind the bleachers, where I remembered Patty. I stayed away from the rest of the students, especially the black kids, as much as I could. I barely spoke. In the end, I graduated first in my class and received a full athletic scholarship to the College of William and Mary up the road in Williamsburg, the second-oldest institution of higher learning in the country and one founded by slave owners.
I kept my head in the books and on the field. In the off-season, I worked at a gas station. After four challenging years, I was set to graduate with honors, and as Coach Kendel predicted, I was expected to be drafted into the National Football League.
Yet, if it hadn’t been for Bojack, I wouldn’t have played one down in the NFL. The morning of the draft, I woke up and took a long walk through campus, settling in the Sunken Gardens, awash in its beautiful spring foliage. It made me think of Mama Jennie’s hillside. A few fellow students stopped to congratulate me on becoming an NFL prospect. I thanked them kindly and wondered, as they walked away, what they would think of me when I opted out of the draft later in the day. At W&M, I had fallen headlong into the rigorous academics and loved every minute of it. My classroom experiences opened my eyes in ways I never could have imagined; a bit like exposure to the books at the Canaan library had done many years before; a bit like the experience I had with Nomi Washington at Hampton Institute. I had become a student of the world and considered myself solidly on the road to becoming somebody.
The Emancipation of Evan Walls Page 26
