Trouble the Water

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  All three of ’em crossed over together, and that felt right to Thomas. That first step onto the other side? Thomas could feel it. He could feel a little bit of weight come back into him. Looking over, he could see Jim felt the same way. First thing Jim done was lean over and pick up a rock. Picked it up! Threw it into the water! Well, Thomas just had to do the same, now didn’t he?

  They musta throwed a hundred rocks, just ’cause they could. But they didn’t dare step a foot back into the water, in case their hands turn back into air.

  Jim was scooping up another rock when he seen the old dog curled up that way on the ground. Thomas knowed it right away that Buddy was dead, and Jim knowed it too. He put a hand on his dog’s head and left it there a long time, like he couldn’t decide whether to be sad that his dog dead or happy that he could feel how hard Buddy’s skull was, how his fur was soft as velvet.

  “We best get going,” Thomas said. “I don’t think this is where we supposed to stop, do you? I think there’s something more we got to find.”

  Jim nodded, all sad, and stood up. He picked off some grit from his pants and rubbed it between two fingers. Then he looked up and pointed at a tree.

  “I see something, stuck in the branches,” he said, and run off to grab it, just ’cause he could, Thomas reckoned.

  Not even a minute later he come back with a hat on his head, and he was looking like he didn’t know whether he laughing or crying.

  “It’s my hat,” Jim said, pulling on the brim. “See that C on it?”

  “I don’t rightly know what a C is,” Thomas said. “You mean that wishbone-looking thing?”

  Jim nodded. “C for Cincinnati,” he said, tracing his finger along the mark. “My name’s still on the inside.”

  And then he laugh and laugh, like laughter this new invention he just discover.

  Seem like soon as they step up into the woods, the woods change over and they in a field, a big green field with a big blue sky. Birds everywhere and flowers, and Jim gone all crazy ’cause he be making a shadow.

  They spent a couple more minutes or maybe a couple more hours throwing their shadows against the green grass until a thought started pulling at Thomas, like it might be time to take a few steps forward.

  “You want to see what’s over that way?” he asked Jim, and Jim said he did, said it in the same unworried way that Thomas was feeling, like nothing but good things gonna cross their path from now on. That’s when the old yellow dog run up behind them barking. Thomas, he didn’t even flinch! Him and Jim start laughing some more, like they know they finally where they supposed to be.

  And Thomas, he knowed that was truer than true when a voice called his name and there come a woman walking across that green field under that blue sky, saying, “Hey, baby! We been waiting for you!”

  And Thomas, he started running, he was calling out to his mama, “I been wanting to see you for the longest time!”

  26

  Trouble the Water

  Callie supposed she might ought go take a look at that old pool, not that she had the least little bit of interest in swimming in it. Didn’t she have a whole river to swim in? Not just any old river either, but the Ohio River, a tributary of the mighty Mississippi, running 980 miles from tip to toe. Couldn’t say that about some old swimming pool, now could you?

  Still, Callie thought she should take a look. She’d seen the pool before, but she’d never studied on it, couldn’t picture in her mind if it had one diving board or two, or if the slide curved around or just went straight down. She guessed she ought to know.

  She decided to take the long way, cross Main Street where it intersected with South Central, then walk all the way up to Elm. Maybe she’d see Buddy. She’d wanted to go down to the river, see if he was roaming the banks, but her mama had strictly forbidden Callie from getting anywhere close to the river for at least two weeks. “You let everything settle down first,” her mama had said. “Might take a while for the fuss to blow over.”

  Mama had meant the fuss about the pool. Everybody in the Bottom was sure that’s why the cabin had been set on fire and a rock thrown through Mr. Renfrow’s window. Callie, she wasn’t convinced. She thought Wendell was right, that Ray Sanders had been making a point about the two of them being friends. The fact was, weren’t no white folks in Celeste worried about colored folks swimming in their pool, because it wasn’t ever going to happen. Nobody would take the trouble to burn down some old cabin over that.

  She crossed Lexington Street and looked down toward the Advance office. The delivery truck stood out front, and Callie thought about getting a look at this week’s paper, see what Mr. Renfrow had to say about the latest happenings. But she hadn’t finished her article yet, and she didn’t want one of those stern looks Mr. Renfrow liked to give her. My deadline ain’t until five p.m. today, she’d remind him, but the fact was she probably was going to miss it. The story couldn’t really be finished until she took one last look at Buddy.

  Callie liked a Friday morning, and this Friday morning was no exception. The middle of the week had been rainy, which folks were saying was a blessing, since sparks from a fire could pop out days later and get things going again. If the woods started burning, the Bottom would be next, they said. But the rain had moved away Thursday night, leaving everything sparkly and clean. Could almost say it was cool, Callie thought, cool meaning one thing in January and another in July.

  Folks driving by in their trucks honked and waved at her, and Mrs. Juanita Lambert said hey from her front porch and did Callie want some lemonade? Callie called out her thanks but kept on walking. Not that she was worried about losing her courage if she didn’t head straight to where she was going. Why, it didn’t take a lick of courage to stand outside a pool and look in. One-year-old baby could do that. If Callie had a nervous feeling in her stomach, it was probably about missing that old deadline. She might have an excuse, but Mr. Renfrow would still fuss.

  Folks fussing at her—that’s one thing Callie Robinson had had enough of for one lifetime. You’d think she’d gone and robbed a bank the way her mama had fussed at her when she learned what Callie had been up to with her private investigating.

  “I ought to ring Orin Renfrow’s neck for encouraging you,” Mama had said Monday night after dinner, the two of them sitting on the porch for what Mama had billed as “a little discussion about the day’s events.”

  “He didn’t encourage me,” Callie explained. “He just helped me. It’s not like he said, ‘Callie, I want you to figure out the story of the old dog for me.’ I came up with that idea by myself. Mr. Renfrow just let me look through some old newspapers.”

  “Did he know that boy was helping you too?”

  For some reason Callie’s mama refused to call Wendell anything other than “that boy.”

  “He saw us together once, but that’s all. What was he supposed to do? Send Wendell home?”

  Mama squinted at her. “You sassing me?”

  “No, Mama! I’m just telling you the facts. Don’t go blaming anything on Mr. Renfrow. It’s not his fault.”

  “Well, his editorial about the swimming pool was his fault. That man doesn’t have a lick of sense.”

  “You don’t think we ought to be able to swim in that pool? You don’t think that’s fair?”

  Mama fanned herself a few times before replying. “Oh, I don’t think fair or unfair comes into it. Of course it’s not fair. A lot of things in this world ain’t fair. And I’m not saying we ought not to change them. But the change has got to be slow, or else a whole lot of people are going to get hurt.”

  Maybe, Callie thought now, crossing Main Street, South Central turning into North Central. She sure didn’t want anybody to get hurt over no swimming pool, especially a swimming pool that might not even be worth it.

  The pool was two blocks down Main Street, at the corner of Main and River, but Callie decided to keep walking north. There were some real pretty houses on Elm Street, before you got to the new elementary
school, houses with wide front porches that wrapped around three sides, and little towers poking up out of the second floor. She’d like to live in one of them houses someday and have herself a maid to clean it.

  Way things were, she thought, kicking a stone off the sidewalk, she’d probably be a maid cleaning houses. Didn’t Carl Jr. say things weren’t ever going to change? Well, her mama cleaned houses, so Callie supposed she’d be a housecleaner too.

  Called stopped dead in her tracks. Now, what kind of thinking was that? She wasn’t going to be no maid! She was going be a private investigator or a newspaper reporter. Not only was she not going to be a maid, she was going to be so rich that her mama wouldn’t have to clean anybody else’s house ever again.

  That idea satisfied her and put a little hop into her step. She’d be rich and live in a big house right here on Elm Street, and if somebody didn’t like it, well, they could take it up with the president, because Callie Robinson didn’t care.

  Thomas Edison Elementary School stood shining at her from the end of the street, where Elm teed into Green. That’s the school where her children would go, Callie thought, a bright, shiny school with a cafeteria and an auditorium and a gymnasium, each in a different wing of the building. Callie bet all the teachers who taught at Edison were sweet natured and never yelled. She’d make sure her children brought them presents at Christmas and on the last day of school, show them teachers how appreciated they were.

  Well, she’d just better go look in the window if that’s where her babies were going to get their education, now hadn’t she? Callie crossed Green Street and walked through the grass to a window that ran the length of a classroom. Oh, it was a nice classroom too, Callie thought, pressing her nose against the glass. Portraits of the presidents from Washington to Eisenhower were hung close to the ceiling, and a long chalkboard spanned the front wall. Someone had written “Have a happy summer!” in big cursive letters across the board, with a wreath of chalk-drawn flowers and smiling suns around it. Callie bet the teacher’d had a party the last day of school, with cake and little cups of punch.

  “Little girl! Little girl!”

  Callie turned to see a stout white woman holding a leash. A poodle stood at her ankles, yipping in Callie’s direction.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Callie called out to her. “Can I help you?”

  “That’s not your school, little girl. Why don’t you run along?”

  The woman’s tone wasn’t the least bit mean; why, it was downright friendly. Still, Callie felt a sting and it surprised her how deep it went.

  “I ain’t causing any trouble, ma’am. Just looking at the nice classroom.”

  “But it’s not your school, now is it? Why don’t you run along home now?”

  Callie felt like she shouldn’t have to, but she didn’t know what else to do. Put her hands on her hips and say, “My tax dollars paid for this school! I got a right to stand here if I want”?

  But then that old white woman would probably call the police, and Callie’s mama would have a fit. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of trouble? she’d say ten million times, until the words were sewn to the inside of Callie’s brain.

  “I was just looking,” Callie repeated, and moved away from the building. She thought about adding, “That sure is a puny dog you got there,” but decided it wasn’t worth the bother.

  She walked a block south, then turned right on Main and walked a block west. She could hear children screaming and splashing and the lifeguard’s whistle blowing even before the pool came in sight.

  Her plan had been to go stand by the fence and peer in, the way she’d looked into that classroom, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe that old lady would walk past, tell her that she needed to move along, that the swimming pool wasn’t for her either. Maybe Callie would just stand on the sidewalk and look. Couldn’t no one take her to task for standing on the sidewalk, now could they?

  Well, she had to admit it. That pool looked delicious. Clear blue water lapping at the sides, glittering here and there as it caught pieces of the sun. Children leaped from the diving boards, one high and one low, and Callie could just imagine it, could just see herself pushing off high into the air and then doing a neat flip before she shot into the water. Oh, that high dive was just built for a girl like her.

  She looked away. Something hard as hands grabbed her throat and pulled tight, and Callie couldn’t tell if it was a scream building in her lungs or a flood of tears about to burst through her eyes. Now what good would that do, she scolded herself, standing on the sidewalk screaming and crying?

  She looked up the road, toward McKinley’s Drug, just to give her eyes a place to focus. Plenty of folks out on this fine morning, mothers pushing strollers, a boy on his bike with a dog trailing beside him on the sidewalk.

  And if that boy wasn’t Wendell Crow! The screams and tears in Callie’s throat melted away. Didn’t he see her standing there on the middle of the sidewalk? Everybody else was throwing glances her way, like what might she be doing there, but Wendell Crow didn’t even notice? Callie stuck her hands on her hips and shook her head. She’d known all along he was worthless, and didn’t this just go to show it?

  She turned back to the pool. Standing on the other side of the chain-link fence, staring straight at her, was a little girl, maybe five, maybe six, wearing an aquamarine bathing suit and a rubber swim cap with petals on it.

  “Hey!” the little girl called out to Callie. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Observing,” Callie told her.

  “You want to come swim with me?” The girl looked down, like she’d suddenly been overcome by shyness. “You probably don’t. I’ve got two sisters, and they don’t want to swim with me either.”

  “Well, it’s not that I don’t want to swim with you,” Callie said. “It’s just . . . uh, I don’t have my suit with me. Yours is real pretty, by the way.”

  “It’s my cousin’s,” the girl informed her, holding out the skirt. “Only she got too fat. I’m pretending I’m a ballerina. That’s what I’m going to be when I grow up. What are you going to be?”

  Callie almost said she was going to be a private investigator, but at the last second she changed her mind. “I’m going to be a newspaper reporter. I’m going to make sure everybody in town gets the news.”

  The girl beamed. “That’s a good thing to be! That’s what I might be too!”

  “Maybe we’ll work for the same paper.”

  “We could put our desks next to each other!”

  With that, the girl trotted off. Callie smiled after her. Little kids were crazy, now that was a fact.

  She took a step closer to the pool, so that now she was standing in the grass. She could smell the chlorine, could feel it sting her eyes a little bit. She only knew it was chlorine because Carl Jr. had told her about it. Callie hadn’t actually ever gone swimming in a pool before. She imagined how it would feel to jump in right now, not even bothering to take off her shoes. All that rain they’d been having, she bet the water would be cold as ice. Bet it’d feel pretty good, too.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” a voice called out behind her, and Callie wheeled around. Who should be standing smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk, his bike leaning against the light pole, but old Wendell Crow himself, his dog, King, standing by his side.

  “What if I don’t want to hear what you got to tell me?” Callie asked. “What if what you got to say ain’t all that important to me?”

  Wendell shrugged. “I reckon you’ll want to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I found Buddy’s body by the side of the river. Other side of the river, I mean. He hadn’t been dead long, I wouldn’t think. Half a day at most.”

  Callie looked at the sky. She couldn’t think of what to say. She put a hand over her eyes and stood that way for a minute, just swaying back and forth. She wasn’t ever getting a dog, that was for sure. Dogs hurt too much. She ever needed a pet, she’d get a fish.

  “He was a p
retty old dog,” Wendell said. “Twelve, fourteen years, that would be my guess.”

  Callie shrugged, sniffing. She guessed. Might have been older than that. “You think Jim’s mama knows?”

  “Doubt it. I was thinking we ought to tell her sometime.”

  “We? As in you and me?”

  Wendell nodded. “Yeah. I mean, she probably thinks of us as a team, the way we said we were working on that article and all.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Callie said. “Only I can’t do it today.” She nodded toward the pool. “I’m doing this today.”

  Wendell glanced over at the fence. “I saw you standing here before, when I was riding down the street. I thought about stopping, but—I don’t know. I guess I couldn’t figure out what you were doing.”

  “Maybe I’m taking notes,” Callie said, finding her voice.

  “About the pool?”

  “About something. Maybe it ain’t none of your business.”

  Wendell cracked a grin. “Yeah, well, don’t you think it might be handy to have a pencil and a notepad?”

  Callie tapped her head. “All my notes are in here.”

  After a minute where neither said anything, Wendell started toward his bike, but then he turned back. “You think it’s going to change anything?”

  “What?”

  “You standing here by the pool? You think that’ll make people change their minds and start letting colored folks in?”

  Callie thought about that little girl asking her to swim. Little white girl that didn’t know any better. Maybe by standing there Callie had planted a seed in her head. Maybe that little girl would grow up thinking colored folks swimming at the pool was a normal, everyday thing.

  “It might,” Callie told Wendell. “Why don’t you stand here with me? Who knows what that might change?”