"Clifton, I think I better move on. I don't want to get all wet and muddy. Like I told you, Daddy and I talked this morning for the first time in forever. I don't think I better overdo it." She forced a little smile. "We better take things slow. I've had a lot of anger toward him that I've let build up
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over the years. Some of it was his fault, some of it mine. Let me go get myself straightened out, then I'll try to fix things with Daddy."
Clifton saw tears begin forming like the swollen raindrops on the windows. "Don't start crying, Mom. You'll smudge your makeup."
She nervously chuckled and stoppered her tears. She smoothed the fabric of her pants, running her palms against the pleats, and then did the same with her sleeves. "How do I look?"
"You look fine, Mom," he said. And he meant it. Despite the hell she'd been through in the past twenty-four hours, she really didn't look too bad. He couldn't believe she was the same woman he'd seen at the kitchen table earlier. There was a shine in her cheeks that he hadn't seen in years. There was optimism in her eyes.
"Thank you, sweetie. You gonna be okay?"
"I'll be fine. I mean, I'll get to fish every day with Swamper. It's not like you're dropping me off at a stranger's house. You just..." and then he was at a loss for words. What should he say? "You just get sober"? "Get straight"? "Get your shit together"? He finally decided on, "You just get well. That's the most important thing."
The tears began to form once more. "I will, honey. And
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I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything." Black streaks trickled down her rouged cheeks. She used her finger to try to stop the flow but it was no use.
Clifton leaned over and hugged her. Then he opened the driver's-side door, reached in the back for the backpack he'd hastily stuffed with a few changes of clothes, and then exited. Mrs. Carlson slid over into the driver's seat and rolled down the window. "I love you, baby. They said I'll be in for thirty days minimum. No visitors allowed, but you can write me. Please do that, okay?"
"I will," he said. He poked his arms through the straps of his pack and hoisted it onto his back. "Good luck."
"Thanks, Cliffy. I'm going to miss you. But when I get out, things are going to be different. I promise. I'm ready for a change. I love you, baby. Love you more than you'll ever know."
"I love you too, Mom."
"Come here," she said.
He leaned over and ducked his head into the open window. She placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed his forehead. "You sure I look okay?" she said as she again pushed away trails of mascara with her pointer finger.
"You look beautiful. I'll see you in a month."
"Okay. Oh, and make sure to get our mail. I left the checkbook in the junk bowl on the counter. There's a little money
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in the account. Can you take care of paying any bills that are due?"
"Yeah, sure, I guess."
"I'll just send my letters to the house since you'll be checking the mail anyway. Oh, and what about money?" she said as she reached over and fumbled with her purse. "I need to give you a little cash."
"I'm fine, Mom. I grabbed my money before I left." He tapped the front pocket of his shorts.
"Be careful, Cliffy. I can't believe I'm leaving you when there's a crazy man on the loose. God, I'm so sorry."
When she started to cry again, he decided it was time to go. He slogged through the slick mud of the road and around the back of the car before dropping down onto the trail. As he descended, the ferns dried their fronds on the cuffs of his jeans. He noticed that the woods smelled fresh and that the storm had wiped out the humidity. One of the normally dry runoff creeks now flowed down the mountainside like quicksilver. When he got to the bottom of the hill next to the back of Swamper's house, he saw steam rising off the New and drifting downstream like a band of runaway ghosts. The river smoked as if it had been set on fire days before and now only smoldered.
He took a deep breath. Guess it's time to go meet Grandpa.
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***
He tapped lightly on the wooden border of the screen door and then let himself in. He slid his arms out of the straps of the backpack and dropped it on the couch. A strong smell of gasoline filled the room. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was strange. "Swamper?" he said as he looked around, locking eyes with the buck on the wall. "Back here. In my room."
Over the past month, one place Clifton had never gone was Swamper's bedroom. He'd seen it, of course, mainly in passing while heading to the bathroom, but he'd never actually stepped foot inside. There had never been a reason to.
Clifton walked down the corridor, almost cautiously, as if stalking something in the woods. The pungent odor of fuel got stronger with every step he took. The hornets in his stomach began to buzz once more. You're being ridiculous. Everything's still the same as it was before. Yeah right. This is my grandfather. He stopped at the threshold and looked in to see Swamper on his knees, bent over near the bedposts, a steel gasoline container in his hand. "Hey," said Clifton. "What're you doing?"
Swamper looked back over his shoulder and nodded but
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didn't make eye contact. He turned around and went back to work. "Hey, boy. I'm pouring kerosene."
Clifton took a few steps into the room to get a better view and immediately noticed something strange. Each of the iron feet of Swamper's bed was resting in an empty tuna fish can. Swamper had the yellow nozzle of the gasoline container placed in one of the cans and was filling it with kerosene. Clifton was puzzled, but at the same time he was thankful for the distraction. Avoiding the obvious topic of conversation relieved him to some degree. "What the heck're you doing?"
Swamper finished pouring and wiped the nozzle with a rag before setting the gas can on the worn pine slats of the floor. "Pouring kerosene. Put it at the feet of your bed and it keeps the bedbugs away. They can't get into your covers that way. Don't you do this at your house?"
Clifton wrinkled his face. "No, I can honestly say we don't do that. I've heard that expression before, about not letting the bedbugs bite, but I didn't think... I mean ... I didn't think bedbugs actually existed."
"Hell, yeah, they exist. At least they used to when I was little. Mama always poured kerosene and we never had no problems. Reckon I've always done it since then."
"Whatever works, I guess."
Swamper stood up and lifted the gas can to his chest. "Let
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me go put this away. You hungry? You need something to eat?" He still didn't make eye contact with Clifton.
Clifton realized for the first time that he actually was hungry. The last thing he'd put in his stomach was whiskey from the night before. He'd been feeding off of adrenaline ever since. He also couldn't help but notice that Swamper seemed to be avoiding the subject just as much as he was. "Yeah, I could eat something if you're making it."
On the bedside table, Clifton saw a black-and-white photo of what must've been his grandmother when she'd been young. Her hair was short and bobbed, and Clifton imagined it was exactly how his mother would have looked if she'd grown up in the late thirties. Swamper saw him looking at the picture and said with a smile, "That was my Millie." Then he walked out.
Clifton followed him down the hall and through the living room toward the front door. Swamper turned his head and glanced at the backpack on the couch as he passed. Outside, he placed the can of kerosene by the top step of the porch stairs. "Would you mind taking that to the storage shack in a little while?" He looked over to the wood line where a small structure stood, resembling, more than anything else, an old outhouse. The branches of a beech tree hung over the shed, its ridged leaves tapping drops of rainwater onto the roof.
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"Yeah, sure. I'll do it right now." Clifton leaned over to grasp the handle.
"Not just yet," said Swamper, who wiped his hands on the rag and then dropped it on top of the can. "Maybe we should sit and talk for a spell first. What do you
say?" He nodded toward the chairs.
Clifton took a seat as the knots in his stomach tightened. He felt nervous in the same way that he did when waiting for the principal to call him into his office. And though he'd never experienced it, he imagined it was the same feeling that a boy felt when his father was about to have the birds-and-the-bees talk with him. The boy knew it was coming, and each party, both the father and son, dreaded the conversation, yet they knew that it was inevitable and had to be done.
"Okay," said Clifton.
Swamper sat down in his rocker. "I see you brought a knapsack with you. Guess that means you're gonna stay a while?"
"Yeah, I guess," said Clifton, who stared straight ahead at the view he'd grown to love so much. The gray sky had broken, and puzzle pieces of turquoise were starting to filter through. The vapor trail from a jet slowly dissipated, blending like fresh paint with the wispy cirrus clouds. The river still burned, but the smoke was lifting as it drifted downstream in the light breeze.
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"I reckon your mama already told you everything?"
"Yeah, most of it, I guess. But I still have some questions." Clifton's stomach tightened another turn, but just as quickly as it did so, some of the tension began to subside. He began to feel better. Relieved. It was time to get everything out in the open. He imagined it being similar to the way his mother had felt, how she had suddenly seemed happy despite the dour circumstances, once she spilled her soul. "I don't understand a few things."
Swamper faced straight ahead too, rocking slowly as he took in the same view as Clifton. Drops of water fell from the corner of the porch roof and dripped, dripped, dripped into a puddle next to the foundation of the house. "Sure. Go ahead and shoot."
Clifton took a deep breath and then let loose. He wasn't sure where to begin, so he just let the words fly out as they came to him. "So you're my grandfather? Okay, I'm starting to understand that. But how come you never said anything to me? I mean, you knew, right? And how come I never knew you before? Mama once told me, a long time ago, that it's because you were racist. Because you didn't like my daddy. Because you didn't want her to marry a black man. And how did you find my bottle in the river? That seems a little too coincidental. What's going on? Do you hate black people? I've never heard you say anything about it before. But maybe that's
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because I'm half black. Maybe you were just being careful. The only thing worse than a racist is someone who is a closet racist. Someone who is too scared to say it to my face. Someone who pretends to be your friend but then says things behind your back. How'd you get my bottle with the note in it? How? What the hell's going on?"
Swamper continued to rock as he pulled his pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his overalls. He rolled a cigarette and lit one of the twisted ends. "Whoa there, horsey. Now that's a lot of questions." He blew a puff of gray smoke into the air that drifted away like the fog over the river. The sun now poked out from behind a cloud, and the temperature on the porch instantly went up by a good five degrees. The birds in the surrounding woods began twittering, acting as the final proof that the storm had indeed passed. "But I think I can answer em all. Let me explain myself the best that I can. Okay?"
"Yeah, okay," said Clifton, who felt guilty for laying it all on Swamper in one fell swoop. But again, he also felt relieved that it was all out in the open.
"First off, I ain't a racist. I don't know what all your mama told you, but the reason me and her hasn't talked in all these years doesn't have nothing to do with your daddy being black--if that's what you're thinking. Well, maybe it did to some degree. At least back then it did. Things have changed,
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Clifton. I ain't perfect. Never claimed to be. When I was young and growing up around here, the attitude toward black folks was different than it is today. I ain't proud of it, but that's just the way it was. Anyway, I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled when your mama told me she wanted to marry a black man. I guess I was embarrassed and worried about what other folks would say more than it bothered me that he was black."
Swamper took a long draw off his cigarette and exhaled deeply. His face relaxed a little. Just like Clifton and his mother, his admission seemed to be doing him some good. "The reason I was against them marrying had to do with who he was, not what he was."
"What do you mean? I don't get that."
"Because of what I told you last night. About my buddy getting killed. But I think you missed it. I reckon I gave you a little more whiskey than I should've. You'd already fallen asleep."
Swamper then repeated the story he'd told the night before. When he'd finished, he said, "So I blamed your daddy for Sweets's death. Then not too long after that, I find out your mama is dating a black man. Never met the fellow, I just heard it from gossiping friends. She never told me herself. She hid it from me. Then I find out she's pregnant and marrying this fellow. Well, I wasn't at all too happy. But then when I found out who it was, well, that's when I lost it. That's when me and your mama fell out of sorts with each other. I
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felt like she was marrying him just to defy me. Just to make me mad because we didn't always see things eye to eye. But it wasn't about your daddy being black. Mostly it wasn't, anyway. And now, all these years later, I can finally admit that it wasn't your daddy's fault that Sweets died. It was an accident. Just one of those things. You're the one that helped me realize that. And just by listening to the things you've said about him, about the way I see how he raised you for the little time he was around, he must've been one helluva good man."
Clifton tried to absorb everything. He kept his eyes focused on a set of turkey vultures circling high in the now completely blue sky. He appreciated Swamper's candor, but he wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook just yet. "You know, I don't think of myself as black. Or white. I'm just me. If I was walking down the road and saw you, I wouldn't think to myself, 'Here comes a white man.' Same if I saw a black man. But I know most people do. I've seen the way people look at me if I'm out with my mom. I've seen the way they look at her too. So does the fact that I'm half black bother you? Are you embarrassed to be with me? I don't mean to be nasty, but I want to know. Being prejudiced doesn't seem like something that can just change overnight."
Swamper sucked the cigarette down to the nub, nearly burning his fingers in the process. His eyes narrowed as he looked over at Clifton. His face was stern and serious. "To
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answer your question, no, it doesn't bother me at all. More than anything, you're what helped me change. You're what made me realize that skin color doesn't mean a damn thing."
"Me? What'd I do?"
"It's not what you did. It's who you are. You're a good kid. You're smart. You're funny. I was thinking about all this last night after you fell asleep, and I came up with an example. You wanna hear it?"
Clifton nodded.
"It's like this house. It's the things on the inside that matter. I don't give a damn what the outside looks like. A sagging porch. Peeling paint. A tree leaning against the roof that I probably should've cut down years ago. That don't make a damn bit of difference to me. It's what's on the inside that matters. So like I said, I don't think I was ever really a racist. I was just acting according to how I was raised. You can believe that or not, but I know it's true." He paused for a moment as he took a last drag off his cigarette and then flicked it over the porch. "Except maybe toward the Nips. But that's a different story. They bombed our ships. Attacked this country. I knew men that were killed at Pearl Harbor. Some from boot camp when I was up in Michigan. I don't think a lot of you young folks quite understand what men of my generation sacrificed for America. For your freedom. But anyway, I'm just an old fool of a man."
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Clifton didn't like what he'd just heard--about Swamper's views toward the Japanese--but in a way he also understood. Not the racism, he didn't understand that, but at least he understood where Swamper was coming from. It was just like he'd said ear
lier: People can't simply change overnight. He also realized that adults weren't always right. He felt like he'd always been trained to believe that adults knew best--in school from teachers, from people on the news, from the president in speeches--but he'd witnessed over and over how wrong they often were, Swamper included. He looked at Swamper as an ideal, he put him on a pedestal, but he also realized that the old man was only human. He wasn't perfect. Clifton shook his head, almost ashamed. "No, you're not. You're not an old fool."
"One last thing and then I'll shut up. But I want you to know. I did a lot of thinking between last night and today after I saw your mama. Life's about change, and I've changed. And you've helped me with that, so I thank you. I've realized that no matter what color a person's skin is on the outside, everyone's blood is the same color on the inside. You and me have the same blood. Same blood, same color. You're my grandson, and I couldn't be prouder."
Clifton was suddenly a little embarrassed. He didn't feel like he'd done anything to deserve the praise he was receiving. "I'm not really sure what to say. But thanks. I mean,
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I'm glad I've met you. I'm glad you're ... I'm glad you're my grandfather."
"Well, I'm glad too. And by the way, don't think you can start calling me grandpa. That'll make me feel old."
They both chuckled for a moment and then things went quiet. There was a lull as they both looked out over the New, absorbing everything that had been said. Clifton watched a cow feeding in the field across the water. He heard its faint low as it communicated with the others around it. After a minute or two of silence, Clifton spoke again.
"So how the heck did you happen to find my bottle? I don't get it."
Gray baby: a novel Page 18
