The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  “Waaaah!”

  “Saluted me an laughed. Then he done it.”

  “That thing had to die. One way or the other.”

  “Wa’n’t a thing! A baby! I kilt it! Wa’n’t a thing!”

  “One way or the other.”

  “That boy died.” My father’s words snap me back to the present. His eyes far away. “From flu! He woulda got along fine on the one leg, he hadn’t caught the bug in the infirmary. I met him two days before he passed. ‘How old?’ I go. Him: ‘Eighteen.’ Then, hour before he expire, cleanin up his sins nick a time he confesses. ‘Sorry, I lied before. Fifteen.’”

  My mother comes walking through with B.J. Smiling, touching his face. “Good boy.” He grins back. “Take out the trash, he do it without a fight. Mow the lawn, flip the mattress. Anything you ask, he’s the good one.” They’re gone, upstairs.

  Pa snaps his paper back to reading level, disappearing behind it, so I know story hour’s drawn to a close. I go back and pick up Mr. Hemingway and his Great War. The bookmark fell out when my father summoned me so I have to flip through to find my place.

  Who’s the good one. I do what I’m asked, and I never throw tantrums. But we all know B.J.’s her favorite. Mostly I’m not resentful. And what she just said was no cut to me anyway, I know it was aimed at my father who she’s still mad at about Christmas dinner.

  “So what he do his chores when he told.” I look up, see my father’s folded his paper on his lap, his eyes on me. Take a sec fore I realize he’s referring to B.J. “That we coulda got from a trained seal.”

  3

  She sits one desk ahead of me, inches away, whisper-giggling to Suzanne Willetts. “Miss Laherty,” says Mr. Holcomb, “could you please in your own words explain to the class the concept of the Magna Carta?” Wish I could help her out, slip it in her ear: England, 1215. Prior to this, if the king didn’t like your looks he could have you beheaded, all his whim. Now justice for everybody, something new and radical. But no way could we get away with it, and anyway, despite her going all agape, something about Margaret Laherty always seems to charm the teachers from being too hard on her. I’ve known her since first grade. Red-brown hair halfway down her back, think you call that auburn. When the lunch bell rings, she gathers her books, walks out slapping Suzanne on the back, some powerful private joke. Margaret’s eyes big and brown. Twinkly.

  I stay behind. Sitting alone to catch up on some biology growl. Smell it: egg-olive sandwich and cheddar corn muffin, baked apple growl. I drink my tin cup of water, trying to appease my roaring empty stomach. Concentrate: Blue eyes can only make blue eyes, but brown-eyed recessives can make brown and one out of four blue, plus earlobes! Genes dictate whether yours’re hanging free or attached to your neck GROWL.

  Fourth grade when the Works Progress Administration started school lunch, I was all in favor. But its novelty’s definitely worn off. I asked my mother about packing. “We are not poor country bumpkins, I think we can afford a nickel for hot dinner, penny for the milk.” I started to argue and she, “And that is that.” I can’t tell her first day back after Christmas Danny Rice pitching his peas at me, amusing half the school. Sitting alone not bothering nobody and still the humiliation, finally I make it all alone: empty classroom. I don’t like deceiving my mother but tell her the truth she’ll send me back there, cafeteria No. So the six cents a day I save: my model Sopwith.

  Feel somebody.

  Henry Lee Taylor. How long he been standing there, the doorway? Dark-hair runt, even shorter than me. “My electric train’s so big my pa had to make a special room in the basement for it.” Till then I didn’t know he could speak, we share three classes but he never raises his hand. Little as he is, there’s a crackle in his voice, well on its way down to tenor.

  After school I stand before Henry Lee’s impressive train set, laid on a table three feet off the ground. The track winds in and out of tunnels, through mountains. Each car’s about ten inches long, four high, two and a half wide. Smoke puffs from the engine. Forty-three cars, passenger and freight. Trees and houses and the post office and the fire department and the butcher’s and the school and the hospital, ding ding! at the street crossing, autos waiting as the safety poles come down, as a traffic light stays red while the train passes, this happens three times and it could happen another hundred far as I’m concerned! But Henry Lee’s already bored. He sets a Packard on the tracks at the crossing.

  “This is Milly and Jack in the tenth grade. He puts his tongue in her mouth, she’s all for it. Uh-oh!” Henry Lee makes the crossing bells go off. “Oh my God! Jack, pull your pants up! Milly, get your bra on!” The warning poles falling. “Hurry! Hurry!” The poles down. Henry Lee’s voice jumps an octave. “Oh my God, Jack! What’re we gonna do, Jack!” Henry Lee hits the switch to turn on the train, headed straight for the car. Henry Lee as Milly lets out a piercing scream. The train crashes into the car, dragging it a few inches before knocking it aside. It lands right side up. Henry Lee, disappointed with nature’s choice, picks up the vehicle, snaps his wrist and flings it, allowing it to flip over and over, Milly and Jack screaming the entire time. Again it lands upright. Henry Lee grunts and flicks it with his finger. Finally it falls upturned, hood on the ground. Satisfied, Henry Lee allows a moment of silence before “Whoosh!” Sweeping his hands, indicating the car has burst into flames. A dramatic pause later, he is respectfully grave: “Tragedy.”

  “Henry Lee.” Someone calling from the top of the stairs. “Your mama told me to remind you to make up your bed fore she gets home.”

  “I know!” Furious, like she just nagged him about this ten times, though until this moment I had no idea we weren’t alone in his house. The footsteps above moving away. Henry Lee is looking at his train and not at me. “Jesus. What’s the point a havin a goddamn maid I gotta do her job for her?” Then he jumps up, vanishing into the mysterious darkness on the other side of the basement. I’m thinking I better get going. Already been here half an hour, my mother will not be pleased I took a detour coming home without telling her. Henry Lee reappears with a pack. “You smoke?” Twice at my cousin Buppie’s last summer. We were out back, and he handed me one he’d snuck. The first Camel got me sick. The second got me sicker. I see what Henry Lee’s got and I’m betting on Luckies.

  “My pa thinks I’ll be a lawyer like him.” Smoke gracefully escapes Henry Lee’s nose. Here he seems to carry some expertise, unlike academics where he’s average at best. If I get a 97, he might get a 72. “Well my pa’s in for a big surprise cuz I’m hopping the trains. He might as well get used to it: his only son’s gonna be a pro hobo.” Henry Lee chuckles and taps his cigarette. Henry Lee and the room are spinning.

  The door above us opens. “Henry Lee, your mama’ll be home in fifteen minutes.”

  “Dammit!” He says it loud, but the maid has already walked away.

  “Henry Lee.” Sour in my mouth.

  “All my worldly possessions in a bandanna tied to a stick. Hoppin top a one freight car to the next.”

  “Henry Lee, I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Not here.” He ascends the stairs, and I follow. Walking through the kitchen, Henry Lee says nothing to the maid at the ironing board. A colored boy older than us sits at the table doing homework. “Who’s your friend?” the maid says, eyes on her work. The colored boy looks up.

  “Randall!” As if it were the stupidest question.

  “Well Randall can’t see your room till it’s straight, you know that.”

  “He’s going to the bathroom!”

  “Alright.”

  Compared to the mess I made last summer with the Camels, I only throw up a little now so Lucky Strikes must be my brand. Wash my face. I shake my hands dry, afraid to touch the towels all spic n span. They’re burgundy, matching the toilet cover and rug and bringing out the touch of burgundy in the wallpaper.

  I walk down to the kitc
hen. “You wanna glass of milk?” Her eyes still on the sheets she’s pressing.

  “No thank you.”

  She and the boy look up. Like manners is some anomaly in these parts. My mother was a maid before I was born, and she always said if we ever had one, she’d treat her with the respect she never got. But maids were never in our budget.

  “Water?”

  “Okay.”

  She gets a glass from a cabinet, holds it under the spigot. “Randall?” I nod, taking the tumbler. “I’m Mrs. Lawrence. This is my son Roger.”

  “I’m finished!” Henry Lee’s entrance, all singsong. Mrs. Lawrence and Roger go back to their previous activities.

  “Don’t you wanna inspect my bed?”

  “Your mama can do that.” She sprays Niagara starch.

  “I got a new freight car, Roger. Coal.” Roger looks at Henry Lee, then at his mother. She shakes out a clean pillowcase.

  “For a minute. Then finish your homework.” Henry Lee apparently does his homework later. If he does it. Now he flies down the steps. I follow, Roger sauntering behind affecting well the nonchalance.

  “Look at this. Shiny like real coal.” Henry Lee picks up the tiny pieces, lets them fall through his fingers. Roger nods, observing with remote interest. “Hey, Roger, you just missed a very tragic accident. You wanna see a very tragic accident?”

  “I better get goin, Henry Lee.” As I speak it, we all hear a car pulling into the driveway overhead.

  “Wait a minute.” If Henry Lee has heard me, he makes no indication of it, bounding up the steps.

  “That means he didn’t finish making up his bed, now trying to do it before his mama see it.” Roger’s eyes have drifted from the train to my schoolbooks.

  “I have to go anyway.” I don’t want to risk meeting Henry Lee’s mother and her holding me up, suddenly excruciatingly aware of what I’ll be in for at home: my own mother’s worry fury, augmented by the minute.

  “How come this says 9?” Henry Lee holds up my algebra book. “Aren’t you in the eighth like Henry Lee?”

  “Yeah, but I tested high for math.”

  “I’m in ninth.”

  “Fourteen?” He nods, opening the book. I might’ve guessed fifteen. He’s had the growth spurt I’ve been longing for.

  “Nineteen forty?” He’s looking at the copyright page. “Last year! Pshew, colored school, our books from the twenties.” He picks up my big fat lit. “Nineteen forty-one!”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Ethan Frome.” He has opened it to the contents. “‘The Raven.’ ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’” I gently put my hand on the book, my last polite warning.

  “Next time I’ll rent it.”

  I stare at him.

  “Nickel for any book you let me borrow. But you gotta let me keep it a whole hour.”

  “Roger! Come on up, finish your studies.” Roger looks up the stairs, toward his mother’s voice. Then back at me. I slowly nod, not sure I believe him. He heads up the steps.

  “You rent Henry Lee’s books from him?”

  Roger turns around. “Nope.”

  “How come?”

  “Report card time, Henry Lee always looking for the excuse. Me holding the books he needs? pshew! When he goes searching for the blame, no chance it gonna be me.”

  “Hah!” Henry Lee grinning, running down the stairs past Roger. “She just wanted to know what I wanted for supper cuz she’s on her way to the market. That still gimme a half-hour fore I gotta make that stupid bed.”

  “Roger!” The tone of a mother’s final warning. Roger quickly exits up and out to the kitchen. Henry Lee seems to take no notice of the fact that I’m standing holding my books, obviously about to leave. He stares wistfully up the stairs. And Roger barely giving him the time of day.

  “I gotta go, Henry Lee.”

  He turns back to the train, flips the switch on, motor humming. “I bet she goes, I’m Mrs. Lawrence,” his mocking not even close to her real voice. He doesn’t look up at me. “Always tryin to pull that crap. She’s a goddamn colored maid, call her Sally.” The engine puffs smoke twice and makes a whoo-hoo! before disappearing around the bend.

  4

  Moby Dick. The Great Gatsby. The Grapes of Wrath, Leaves of Grass, Our Town, too many choices! Got here early for the best pick, even before B.J. awake. The public library’s book sale to support the war effort, and sixty-four cents jiggling my pocket.

  She went through the roof after I came home late from Henry Lee’s Tuesday, but I could see her soften when I said why. It surprised me, her obviously so glad I finally have a friend. Thought I’d spared her that aching truth: her miserable, outcast son.

  So grounded only a day, and Thursday after school I’m back at Henry Lee’s with permission. Entering through his kitchen, “Hi Sally.” He sneers it, nudging me.

  “Hello, Henry Lee.” Stirring the stew on the stove, her back to us.

  “And Randall,” Henry Lee acknowledges.

  Roger at the table looks up from his books. His mother, “Good afternoon, Randall.”

  “Hi.” Avoidance of direct address.

  “There’s some cookies for yaw.” Henry Lee takes the saucer without offering any gratitude, and I follow him to the basement.

  He has a fancy new freight car filled with automobiles to transport: Packards and Caddies, steering wheels and doors that open and shut. “Here’s a Buick Roadmaster Convertible Phaeton. You can hold it.”

  Instead I inspect the new LaSalle. “You got all this yesterday? Since I was here?” Henry Lee shrugs. “Your birthday?”

  “No. Does it have to be your birthday to get a present?” Yes, birthday or Christmas but I don’t say it, and now Roger’s footsteps on the stairs. “Hey Roger, wanna see my new automobile transport car? Here’s a Packard Super Eight One-Eighty Convertible Coupe. And thisn’s a Cadillac Dee-luxe Touring Sedan.”

  But Roger’s looking at me. “I see your books?” I’d dumped them other side of the room. I nod, and he takes a cookie, strolls over.

  Henry Lee’s lecturing me on the cars and I lean back, tipped on the hind legs of my chair munching my oatmeal raisin. Feeling kingly, and Henry Lee says something to make me laugh. Glance over and notice Roger and my geography gone. Nickel on top of my remaining texts.

  “Roger here every day?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on with Roger. Used to be he just pop by every once in a while. He got some cracka dawn job movin fruit crates at Farley’s and he gotta clean up at night too, then Sally complainin she never sees him so sometimes he’d come by after school to please her. Like Tuesday. But then he came Wednesday and today. I had the impression he was disappointed you weren’t here yesterday. Guess you two are in love with each other.”

  When it comes time for me to leave, I get this sick feeling climbing the stairs. What if Roger’s no longer in the kitchen? What if he went home with my book—stole it, or just packed it with his own, forgot he had it? Then I think no, I could tell Henry Lee’s mom who would get on Roger’s mom who would get on Roger. But what if Roger claimed he never had it? Then I could spill the beans on our deal. But what if people didn’t believe me? Oh they’d believe me. Colored word against mine? But then what would they think about the deal?

  No worries, Roger’s there in the kitchen alone studying my geography. He looks up at me, then at the clock, and hands me the tome.

  “Germany sure changed the maps. Even since your copyright.”

  “What if it hadn’t been a whole hour? You already paid up front.”

  “Then it’d be the last time you and I did business.”

  So today, between all those missed lunches plus Roger geography Thursday and lit Friday, I feel all Rockefeller at the library sale. Still have my Sopwith goals, but for the war effort I can part with a little change. Seems I’m the on
ly kid here, like they all got better stuff to do Saturday.

  Pile of miscellaneous. Cookbooks. An old Latin primer. Scouting for Boys: The Boy Scout Scheme. What It Is! What It Is Not! which I flip through: memories. Fourth grade I’m on a Boy Scout camping weekend, and Willie Joe Arnold in the sixth says he’s ready to give up Scouts for the Junior Klan, and Jack Matthews in the fifth goes, “Why not both?” and Willie Joe goes, “One uniform’s enough.” Willie Joe of the multitudinous badges could rub two sticks together and make the spark in a flash, and now he ties a stick perpendicular to another, rubs the intersection with a third stick, and when it’s fast alit he puts the burning cross in the ground which we all awe-admired till it fast gone to ashes. Then we got into a discussion about lynching which I’m completely against. The way I feel if somebody commits a crime he deserves to be tried by a jury of his peers and let justice reign. Magna Carta to the Fifth Amendment. And Sixth.

  Then I spy it. A Handbook of the Sign Language of the Deaf: Prepared Especially for Ministers, Sunday School Workers, Theological Students and Friends of the Deaf by J. W. Michaels. Back in the fall I’d had it in mind to renew that Helen Keller book for B.J., but after I had to wrestle him all over our room to wrench it out of his hands, that little volume was staying at school. It killed him, pouting for days.

  The other thing. Yesterday Henry Lee complained about having to go to Selma today, some big affair for his great-grandfather’s ninetieth. But next Saturday he promised it’d be just us two, doing what we pleased. Like he assumes what I really want to do is reserve Saturday to be his friend. I guess I sorta do. Meanwhile I can tell B.J.’s getting agitated, losing after-school me to Henry Lee. I don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen when he finds out I’ll be gone all day Saturdays too, so this library peace offering only cost me a nickel.

  I walk in, my brother all red-eyed. I been gone barely an hour, what? He wake up bawling, not seeing me? I hold up the book, and suddenly his face light up like Christmas. We fix ourselves jam sandwiches and go to our room, sit on the throw rug. Skip the manual alphabet which we know, and head straight to the hand words: there’s where you make language. “Mother,” “Father,” “Brother,” “Sister,” “Eat,” “Sleep,” “Thank you,” “Home.” That last one B.J. latches onto. “You,” pointing at me, “home.” He signs it and says it in his deaf way, and I nod and say the same thing about him, Yes, we’re both home, and he shakes his head cuz what he’s trying to say is You stay home, his communication is quite clear, and yet like a jerk I keep smiling and faking misunderstanding.