He told Jackson to stay in the truck until he signaled. He thought it might look suspicious he was bringing a Yankified Jewish boy to visit with Katherine Marie, and she needed her job, couldn’t have a whiff of trouble with the home’s administration. Not that there’s likely to be any bosses around at this hour, he said, but it never hurts to be careful.
Jackson sat in the truck, waiting, more nerved up than he was willing to admit. He tried to regulate his breathing, which had become labored despite all that singing. He looked into Bokay’s rearview to pat down his trip-tousled hair with his hands.
When the back door to the rest home opened, Bokay’s long arm reached in to keep it ajar. Jackson held his breath. Katherine Marie strolled out and stood on the landing. She had on a white uniform and her hair was braided the way she did, in one long central braid. One hand was on her hip and the other was up shielding her eyes searching for no one else but Jackson settin’ in her fiancé’s truck in the dark. She looked magnificent. She looked like she did that night by the river when they were children, like an incandescent angel of the Lord, complete with wings outstretched. It was the uniform, he supposed. With a little help from the moon. He jumped out of the truck with as much grace as he could muster and approached her. He felt certain his smile rivaled the moon in luminosity. He bounded up the steps to the landing. Demonstrating enormous restraint, he stopped short in front of her and, with a dumbass smile on his face, put out his hand for her to shake. What she did next was a moment from Jackson’s dreams. She laughed, slapped away his hand, put her arms around him, and gave him a quick hug, thumping him on the back with her hands. It was a chaste hug, sororal in character, but for Jackson it felt like the satisfaction of buried hopes. Nor was there the slightest trace of shudder in it. His spirits soared. He hardly had time to register his feelings when she released him and Bokay joined them. Jackson recalled his mission on Bokay’s behalf and studied the ground to hide his pleasure.
I’ve got an errand up the road, Bokay said. You all catch up. I’ll be back in say an hour to take you home, Jackson. He lowered his head to kiss Katherine Marie good-bye on the mouth. She turned her head at the last moment, and his lips hit her cheek. As he left them, he pulled an expression behind her back that said: See what I mean?
Riverside Rest Home fronted Dalrimple, but its rear faced the Pearl. There were rockers lining a hillock of land above its banks. During the day, the ambulatory residents fought over them. Katherine Marie suggested they go sit and rock and talk, which they did. Right away, Jackson asked her how she’d been.
Oh, fine and dandy, she lied initially, fine and dandy. This is a good job, the pay’s not bad, and I can study for the college entrance examinations during the night when everything’s quiet. During the day, three days a week, I do piecework for Annie Althea. Then, of course, I’m helpin’ Mama with the twins and Bokay up to the church the rest of the time.
All that means is you’re occupied, Jackson said. He turned his chair around to address her eye to eye. How are you really. You holding up?
He didn’t know why, but Jackson felt there was no reason on earth why this woman at this time should give her deepest trust to him, but she did. At his words, the floodgates burst and everything that was vulnerable in her flowed in a tearful river of misery down her dear face. There was nothing for him to do but try to put his arms around her for comfort. Trying meant nothing. He reached out, enfolded her, got the preemptory flinch, the fierce tearing away, the presentation of her back. It broke his heart. He pulled back as far away from her as her need directed and listened to a garbled sobbing release on the subject of her previous year, dwelling in a peculiar variety of Mississippi hell.
It would’ve been alright, she told him, she could’ve got over what happened except that Bubba Ray wouldn’t leave her alone. There wasn’t anywhere she could go that he didn’t show up sooner or later. And every time he did, he caused her some kind of trouble. He’d stare at her back at the post office until she dropped everything she carried. He’d walk up and down outside Annie Althea’s until she lost stitches or cut along instead of against the bias. There was one time in the early spring during Holy Week just after evening services. She was collecting prayer books from the pews over to the church when she swore she saw his round sweaty face staring in at her from the window. The only time she felt safe was when she was at work at the rest home, because at least then she could pretty much depend he was home asleep in his mama’s house. I don’t think he ever goes to school, she said. Because he’s always doggin’ me durin’ the day. People notice, you know, and they laugh at him. The black folk make jokes about his bein’ in love with me. The white folks too. The whole town seems to know how he dogs me. Well, except Bokay, and it’s a sad old story there, ain’t it? Old as Moses: everybody but the black man knows his woman gettin’ put upon by a white man. Oh, I know it looks ridiculous, she said. He’s only thirteen. That I should be afraid of a thirteen-year-old boy, even one as big as him. That’s why folk laugh at him, ‘cause he’s so young. Plus he’s got that reputation of bein’ a bit tetched. Everyone say he’s just not right because of that seizure he had. But you and I both know what he’s capable of. You and I both know what he’s got in mind. And I’m sorry, Jackson, but that boy is evil. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He doesn’t care what folks say about your parents behind their backs over him. He hears ’em, and he pretends he don’t. The kluckers say the doctor and his wife got one Yankee niggerlover son and a redneck one to boot. That it’s only a matter of time before one of you gets your daddy kicked off the Council. Oh, it’s terrible, terrible. He means to finish the job he started, Jackson. And I don’t know what I will do when he tries. I carry a knife now, you know. That’s right, I do. I want you to know I’ll hurt him, shoot, I’ll kill him if I have to. Then what’s gonna be? What’s gonna become of us all then?
Jackson wished he’d had the right words for her, but he was out of luck there. His heart was too sick with shock and dismay, so he said the first thing that popped into his head: Well, maybe I should kill him for you, Katherine Marie, before he has the chance to cause you more harm.
That stopped her in her tracks. She whipped around in her seat and stared at Jackson as wide-eyed with horror as he must have been that night they shared on the riverbank, the night of their first meeting so many years ago.
Oh, Jackson, she said. I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t cause you to murder your own brother, much as he deserves it. I couldn’t carry that guilt on my soul.
You need to tell Bokay, Jackson suggested next. But no, she was having none of that, either. Bokay really would kill him, she was convinced, and their lives would be ruined. They discussed whether she could charm Bokay into leaving town, starting fresh somewhere else then. Katherine Marie turned that idea over in her mind. She felt he wouldn’t go for such a plan, since they were established in Guilford. They had good jobs. Bokay was rising in the church, and they’d family here, family who depended on them, but maybe it was worth a try, she thought, maybe it’d work if she found a good enough excuse. Jackson asked her how close she was to applying to college. He nearly broke in two from the tide of sentiment that washed over him while he watched the old pride return to her spine. Her back straightened, she held her sweet point of a chin up, told him they had about enough money saved for two semesters but figured it’d take another year or more before they had tuition for the whole two years a practical nurse’s training would require. They batted back and forth the wisdom of waiting when college was the perfect reason to leave town. Bubba Ray’s only going to get older and bolder, Jackson cautioned, then immediately regretted his candor, for she’d just about recovered from her outburst, her eyes were pretty dry, her voice clear again when the very idea of an older and bolder Bubba Ray seized hold of the weakest part of her and, mute as a stone, she trembled from head to foot imagining such.
Bokay’s truck came up the drive just then. It never ceased to amaze Jackson the talent women hav
e for dissembling. He knew of no man who, once the rage or the fear took hold of him, could slap on a pleasant face or a calm demeanor without a hairsbreadth of hesitation if occasion quite suddenly demanded, but that’s exactly what Katherine Marie did at the sight of her beloved Bokay’s headlights turning into a parking space. Not a word to him, she hissed at Jackson out one side of a frozen smile. Promise me, on your life.
He did.
Naturally, as soon as they were alone in the truck, set to drive home, Bokay asked: What did you find out?
Now, Jackson had been ponderin’ ever since Bokay pulled up exactly what he was going to tell him, and what he decided represented a chance taken, the chance that Katherine Marie would take his advice to heart and hurry up her college plans, making sure she’d have to relocate for her education, as what Jackson told him was just that. He told Bokay she’d discovered a Baptist nursing school in Detroit that would likely give her a scholarship as they were reaching out to rural students, principally ones of color, and the idea of leaving home made her fraught with anxiety, so much so that she was fearful of bringing up the subject with him. Oh, Jackson told whopper after whopper trusting that Katherine Marie would be quick enough to answer Bokay’s questions later on with the proper amount and type of detail. Luckily, his pack of falsehoods nipped around the heels of Bokay’s chaotic emotions about the state of Katherine Marie’s commitment to herd them to a safe, comprehensible conclusion. In other words, Bokay bought it. He shook his head in agreement, said: Why, thank you, Jackson. Thank you very much. It sounds very like her, worryin’ about her mama, no doubt, and the twins as much as myself in her absence. I’m going to talk to her. Let her know that she shouldn’t sacrifice her dreams to us. We’ll manage. We’ll figure it out. I hear there’s a lot of good work up in Detroit. I can go with and still take care of things down here both. Isn’t that what a man does, Jackson? Take care?
Bokay was much relieved. In fact, judging by his behavior, his relief was heroic in proportion. He sped down Dalrimple with his left arm out the window. He used it to thump on the roof in a heavy rhythm that made the cab shake while he shouted out: She loves me still! Thank you, Je-sus! Thank you, Jack-son! over and over again as if they were the same entities. He’d whoop and holler and then start it up all over again: Thump! Thank! Thump! You! Thump! Je-! Thump! sus! Thank! Thump! You! Thump! Jack! Thump! son! It struck Jackson as loony. He wondered if he was entirely safe being driven by a man made mad with love when something else happened that gave him a real reason to worry.
That is, from out of nowhere, a green Ford Maverick was behind them, churning up dust so close to their rear end that if Bokay slowed down even a tad to make a turn, disaster would ensue. Bokay! Jackson called out as warning, Bokay! But trying to get his attention proved futile while he was burstin’ with a young believer’s visceral expression of gratitude to his God, a gratitude that tied him so tight to the divine source it drowned out everything else around him, including those good old boys tailgatin’ the truck to no wholesome end. Jackson was shouting now, pulling on Bokay’s arm, trying to tell him that danger pursued them and the worst kind at that, for it was drunk, full-moon Mississippi danger. Horrified, he watched the Hicks and Turner boys through the rearview as they passed a bottle. Everybody’s windows were down. He could hear their wild-assed shouts, their harrowing howls of delight at finding a nigger and a jewboy alone together driving in the night on a dark deserted road at the end of the Freedom Ride summer. It was a time that rankled and enflamed them to such a degree, no matter how many heads they’d cracked over to the bus station in the city there plain weren’t enough to satisfy.
Jackson didn’t know when it was that Bokay finally noticed the predicament they were in. He didn’t feel the first hit from behind, he knew that. They both lurched forward, but Bokay demonstrated not a moment’s break in his thumpin’ and praise to Je-sus and Jack-son. The second time, though, he could not help but feel. The second time, it was harder, drove his free hand from the wheel, and the truck maneuvered on its own volition, according to the laws of impact and motion and torque and Jackson didn’t know what else. He plastered himself back against the seat and gripped tight the bottom of the seat cushion. It was all he could do as they swiveled to the left, and then the direction they went was up. They flipped all the way around, landing sideways against the pavement on the driver’s side. Bokay was out cold and Jackson, he was piled up more or less on top of him. Probably Bokay’s bulk saved him. Jackson was conscious, he was alert, he climbed out of the truck somehow, he had no idea how. He only knew one moment he was all crumpled up into Bokay and the next he was outside the car, panting, hurt, bleeding, and not knowing what the hell to do next.
The green Ford Maverick was gone. Jackson saw this right away, processed its absence as a good thing, as a thing that meant maybe the worst had happened and all he needed to do was figure out how to take care of what was in front of him: Bokay unconscious, stuck in a smoldering heap of metal on an untraveled road in the middle of the night. He tried to waken him first, tried to pull him out. He couldn’t do it. He was too weak on a good day to haul a man that size. So he stumbled up the road looking for help, and thank God it wasn’t very far he had to go before he came upon a phone booth in the middle of nowhere. Why on earth there was a phone booth on a stretch like that without homes or stores or gas stations or buildings of any kind nearby, he did not know. Perhaps it appeared there for him that night, perhaps it disappeared the next day, he couldn’t say. He thanked God for it as if it were the miracle he perceived it to be and found it another miracle there was a dime in his pocket. He called his daddy and he told him there was an accident. He told him where he was and told him he wasn’t too bad, there was someone who needed his help more than he, and then he went back to Bokay and sat like a fool next to the smoldering truck and waited for his father to arrive.
Daddy came. Looked him over. Said: Well, you’ll live, son. Now, why exactly are you and that devil Bokay alone together on the side of the road in a wrecked-up vehicle in the middle of the night? Jackson had no idea what he told him.
Somehow, they got Bokay out of the truck and into Daddy’s car. Then they went to Daddy’s office on Main Street. By this time, Bokay was awake, although he kept slipping back into unconsciousness then breaking out of it again. The first thing he expressed was concern over his truck, which was his livelihood, after all, and concern about who was picking up Katherine Marie from work later on. Daddy soothed him the way doctors do, telling him he needed a once-over and he was happy to do it for him, that Bokay was lucky to be alive and not to have killed his son as well, that if push came to shove, Jackson would go pick up Katherine Marie in the doctor’s very own car so he needn’t worry. And as Daddy found Bokay required at the very least taping of probable broken ribs as well as stitches for the gashes on the top of his head, his right knee, and left hip, this is exactly what happened once Daddy patched up Jackson’s more minor injuries and determined he was recovered enough from the shock and jostling he’d received to drive a car.
When Jackson got to the rest home, Katherine Marie was waiting outside looking for Bokay’s truck. Jackson called out to her from Daddy’s sedan and told her there’d been an accident, Bokay was hurt but not so’s he’d need a hospital, and he was there to take her to him. Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, she said, tears filling her eyes and voice. When she got in the car, she knocked into the door frame as she was unsteady on her feet and her eyes were clouded by fear. What happened? What happened? she said, and Jackson told her piece by piece because he didn’t want to send her into some kind of hysteria. We were driving home, he said, and we were run off the road. Oh, no, oh, no, she said again in a voice he’d never heard from her before, a frightened child’s voice. Even when she was a little bit and her granddaddy was dying, he hadn’t heard her sound timid like that, so hollow, so small. It frightened him and he did everything he could to build her hopes up, reminding her how strong Bokay was and how Daddy said everything
would be alright. You’ve got to believe me, don’t panic now, dear, please don’t. He concentrated more on soothing her than he did on the road, and he didn’t notice that green Ford Maverick around anywhere. He could not tell if it followed them or when it was exactly those two inside hatched their plan. He could only swear that when he pulled up to the doctor’s office and got Katherine Marie out of the car, he saw from the corner of his eye that green Ford Maverick racing off just as a bottle of Jim Beam with a flaming trail of cotton sticking out of it smashed through the front window of his daddy’s examining room.
Now, sometimes blind luck is as much a servant to evil as to good, and the room where Daddy was stitchin’ up Bokay’s wounds housed all manner of flammable materials, oxygen tanks and the like, so the whole thing went boom! and exploded into a fireball before they could even register what happened except that Katherine Marie and Jackson were blown backward with the force of the explosion. They rocked back and forth in the street on their knees, drop-jawed, watching the fire. Katherine Marie screamed and tried to run into the building, but he held her back. Then Bokay crawled out of the wreckage, his hair smokin’, his clothes in tatters. He dragged the doctor from underneath his armpits into the street and Jackson saw his father was on fire. On fire up by his hairline on the right and on fire on the same side by his sleeve. Both of them were bathed in blood. Jackson ran over, ripped off his shirt, and tried like hell to put the fire eating his daddy’s eye and arm out.
Home In The Morning Page 16
