The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  “Why’d you wait for me?” Something I’d always wondered. “Why’n’t you teach Ma or B.J. or Benja?”

  “They don’t like chess, they prefer rummy.” He always called rummy a women’s game, though occasionally he’d play it with my mother to have something to do with her.

  “What about B.J.?”

  “I wantchu to rethink where you jus moved that rook.” In some ways he still casts himself as his own opponent.

  In the third endgame I stare at his king, incredibly in my rook’s direct path. I look up at him. He grins. “Congratulations. You jus become my equal.” He winks. “I think your first win deserves some ice cream.” This is almost more father-son camaraderie in one day than I can stand, and I grab my sweater fast before he changes his mind. Strolling out on the sidewalk Pa lectures me about the moves in the first two matches, where I went wrong, and I turn around to see B.J. staring down at us from our bedroom window. We’ve scarcely seen each other since the water glass incident last week. That night I’d taken a chocolate chip cookie up to our room, turned out the light and got in bed quick, trying to beat him so we wouldn’t have to communicate. I heard him coming up a few minutes later. Under the covers I munched, knowing he couldn’t hear it, feigning sleep. When he walked in, he could have turned on the light to be mean but he didn’t. Got into his pajamas and into bed. Something felt out of whack. I sneaked a peek. Usually he lies down and is instantly asleep, but he was sitting up, staring into space. His breathing heavier than usual, slow and even.

  It’s just a little stand on the corner. There’s a low cement wall nearby and we sit, me licking chocolate, Pa with his vanilla. He starts talking about his previous attempts to bring out the athlete in me, and for some reason this usual source of irritation to him he now finds sociably funny. “I’d pitch that damn ball an you’d whip the air, hard swingin.” His tongue all white. “You’d give that bat the dirtiest look, like you all made some pact an the bastard didn’t hold up his end a the bargain.” We’re laughing. “No worries, boy. After you graduate this spring an I get you on at the mill, ain’t nobody there gonna be askin boutcher battin average.” My fingers suddenly clutching hard, the cone goes crack. Now a toddler screaming and hollering, empty cone in his hand, his entire strawberry scoop on the ground at his feet. “Didn’t I tell you to stop holdin it like that?” asks his mother. “Didn’t I?”

  The next Saturday, only six days till debate, my father wakes me. “Get dressed,” he whispers. I look at the clock—12:40, the house dark. I’d been in bed since ten. B.J., oblivious to noise, sleeps through Pa’s disturbance. Ma, early riser, usually also likes to turn in by ten, except Friday and Saturdays when she waits up for Benja to make her eleven curfew. I hop out of bed and grab the clothes I just slipped out of two and a half hours ago.

  In the kitchen he rummages through the icebox. Pops a chicken leg into his mouth, “Want one?” his consonants swallowed by the drumstick. A duffel flung over his shoulder.

  It’s a long walk. They’re looking at gasoline rations for the spring, but the rubber rations already here and Pa’s taking extra care with his truck tires: no waste. We carry lanterns to see once we get to the edge of town where there’s no streetlights, and I think of how dark it must be in the cities on the West Coast where the war blackouts are in effect. I munch on a wing while Pa twirls a toothpick round his mouth. He doesn’t talk which is fine by me, I’m not yet in the wakened world. My father doesn’t do things like this, clandestine, so these steps, these moments feel real and not. After an hour we’re at the foot of Lowden’s Mountain and hit the steep incline, then halfway up veer off to a path in the woods. I see a flash, hear a crackle, smell it: Fire! I turn to Pa, my eyes, mouth wide, but he just keeps walking in the direction of the flames.

  As we come closer, into a clearing, I’m relieved to see the inferno is contained. The forest is not on fire. It’s only one large burning cross. About forty people, mostly or all men, mill about in Klan robes.

  “Shit,” my father says. “Never knowed em to start on time before. Wanted you to see em light it.” Out of the duffel he pulls his own uniform, slips it on. “Let’s go.”

  As we approach, I see that all eyes are fixed on a man near the cross, screaming a tirade.

  “And who are they!”

  “The niggers!” comes the reply. Like the responsive readings in church, but here more passion to it.

  “The niggers. They get hired on fore a white man cuz a nigger’ll work for peanuts! The few of em willin to work at all.”

  My father waves to three men standing near us. They look at him, look at me. One I know is Mr. Wright who works with my father because of the man’s missing two right-hand fingers that got cut off at the mill. One I know is Mr. Stewart because he always clears his throat about once a minute. The third has to be Mr. O’Brien because Mr. Wright and Mr. Stewart and Mr. O’Brien bowl together and shoot pool together and sip Coca-Cola together in front of the Woolworth’s. None of em acknowledges us.

  “Go over there,” my father says soft, indicating a clump of trees beyond the clearing.

  From my vantage point I can hear and see all, even better from this more secluded spot since no one’s paying any attention to me so I feel less rude staring.

  “And who tells the niggers what to do?”

  “The Jews!”

  “I was strollin down the street the other day,” says the orator, now speaking in a more cordial anecdotal tone that allows me to recognize him as Reverend Pitsfield, “arm in arm with my wife who bared my four children who bared my fourteen grandchildren.” Some of the men laugh, apparently the ones who go to our church and know Reverend Pitsfield brings to every sermon a brief census of his progeny. He never seems aware that we’ve heard it a thousand times though because now, like in church, he appears momentarily startled, trying to figure out the joke. “An this nigger come by, couldn’ta been more n twenty-five, an passes right by us. Steada steppin off the sidewalk, he passes right by my wife, she swore he near brushed up against her!”

  Stars. The blazing cross diminished a heap of them, but still hundreds sparkling. There’s peace where I am, part of the goings-on and separate from them at the same time. I don’t understand everything being said by the reverend or the audience, some of it in secret code.

  My parents rarely argue, least not in front of us, but a year ago there was a major ruckus on laundry day when my mother threw my father’s Klan robe in with the colors and turned it pink. “It oughtn’ta been in the goddamn machine no way!” I was in my bedroom and could hear him hollering from the kitchen. “Delicate. Han wash!” (His current robe is a replacement.) Just how accidental the accident was is debatable, given that my mother has always thought of my father’s Ku Kluxing as silliness. She’s told us when she was a kid her best girlfriend was colored, though naturally they parted ways once they got to high school. Both grew up to be maids, then my mother joined the navy. “What?” she’d asked Pa once as he was fixing his truck. “Yaw scared the coloreds in this town plannin some big revolt?” He grunted, then stuck his head back under the hood.

  At one point a kid in a robe, looking not much older than I am, turns around to stare at me, and I stare back, then his daddy next to him puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the kid turns back around to face the speaker. Reverend Pitfield’s speech threatens to be long as his sermons, but in the middle of a sentence the cross suddenly breaks, falls over. The men cheer, and in a show of cooperation that touches me, begin to pass ready pails of water to douse out the conflagration, like volunteer firemen called to quell a campfire gone wild. When there is little left but glowing embers, my father waves at me, and we head on home.

  At some point, he takes a detour further into the woods. “Pa?” He ignores me. Looking for something.

  “Ah! Wa’n’t sure I’d find it in the dark.”

  A big old tree, all these carvings in the bark. Wh
en he speaks, his voice carries the quiet of reverence. “Happen aroun aught-three. Since I come in with the century that make me three, too little to remember but my pa tole me. That nigger workin Whitacre’s farm violated this white girl, nineteen an married with a child. The whole town took after him: Dr. Brinkley who’d just pulled out my brother’s appendix, Mr. Peterson the district attorney, Judge Healey, Reverend Longwood, most a the farmers and most a the merchants, the girl’s family naturally though for some reason their name I can’t recall, all together, all hands on. The culprit took to runnin but they snagged him quick. Beat him, burned him, dragged him aroun, back of a cart. Practically dead by the time they slipped the noose round his neck. All the while to the end, ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.’ ‘Did he?’ I asked your granpaw. ‘Sure he did,’ answered my pa, ‘an if he didn’t was a lesson to any of em thought maybe they might sometime.’ When it was over, Mayor Rook looked at the pack of all of em an said, ‘Yaw behaved like honorable men tonight. I’m privileged to be amongst ya.’ This was the tree. You fine your granpaw?”

  A dizzying maze of carved initials but not hard to locate the imprint of my deceased elder, given name Ebenezer. Big, like John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence: E.E.

  Still a ways to trek down the mountainside, and not until long after we’re back on flat ground does he speak again. “You’re thirteen, baptized in the church this year. This is parta growin up too.” I’m looking at the Big Dipper. And there, that star with a slight orangey tint. Mars.

  “They were cautious. Not about you bein a boy, you mighta noticed a handful there bout your age. What was bothersome was you without a robe which clearly identified me, and the meetin speakin all sortsa inner sanctum things, they wonder do I take it all serious, what a secret society is. Well how you make decisions about what you wanna do, you don’t firs taste it? I ain’t forcin you into nothin.” I wonder if Grand Wizard Pitsfield gets on Pa for never being in church. Or do they call it Grand Dragon? “So whatcha think?”

  “It was nice.” It was, though I imagine if that cross toppling hadn’t interrupted the reverend and I’d’ve had to stand for another hour of his discourse, the charm might have worn off.

  My father shrugs. “I ain’t forcin you into nothin.” Some rustling off to the left but before my light catches it I’m hurled, flying, deer hooves on me on my chest, Pa yelling slapping its rump, its head turns its antler cut my face and it’s gone, vanished into the forest.

  “You alright, boy? You alright?”

  “Uh-huh.” I touch my forehead, look at my fingertips. Blood.

  “We’ll get you patched up at home. Goddamn dumb buck!”

  My father tells me to sit in the kitchen while he brings down bandages and antiseptic. If he’d brought me up to the bathroom medicine cabinet, we would have wakened my mother who would have flown into hysterics at the sight of my wound and blamed my father for his foolish Klan business. In the light of day and with the gash properly dressed, he must figure her panic will be somewhat abated. The grandfather in the living room dongs—4:15.

  “Pa, you said you don’t wanna force me into anything.” The ointment he dabs on my forehead stings and I flinch. “I was thinking. Maybe I’ll go to high school next year. I can always get on at the mill later, but I was thinking. Maybe I’ll finish school, get my diploma.” He takes my hand and puts it on the bandage to hold it in place while he tears the tape with his teeth.

  “We musta surprised it,” he says. “People think deer all gentle, nothin but prey. Well ain’t nothin more dangerous than prey on the defense.” He pats me on the arm and gently leads me up the steps to tiptoe past his and my mother’s room before he brings me back to my bed. Feel like my head just touched the pillow when it’s time to get up for Sunday school. And only when Ma lets out a yelp at breakfast, her hand over her mouth staring at sleepy me and reminding me of the compress on my forehead, do I know for sure it wasn’t all a dream.

  7

  “Immediately prior to the crash of ’29, Hawaii’s commercial growth was staggering. Given its exceptional strategic position, most demonstrably evidenced by the catastrophic events of December 7th, we can expect the territory will benefit profoundly by the influx of capital related to the military industry, propelling it well on the road to full economic recovery, perhaps even eclipsing its astonishing pre-Depression record. And with increased taxes reflecting statehood, Hawaii’s economic prosperity would result in prosperity for all of us.”

  Lucille stands center stage behind the lectern, opening with our affirmative constructive speech. On this Friday the 20th, the day for which we have been priming and cramming, she assumes the economic angle she has prepared, and I sit on the auditorium stage once again astounded by her eloquence which, in front of an audience, seems to have surpassed even her extraordinary fluency in our practice sessions with Mr. Hickory. Lucille, who I had previously thought of as awkward if not cold and defensive, masterfully rose to the debate challenge, which is as much about maintaining a dignified and composed manner as it is about presenting astute arguments. She is smartly dressed in a crisp white blouse and navy jacket and skirt cutting just below the knee, brown penny loafers. I wear my brown Sunday suit, my sole good outfit. This morning my mother had fussed over my hair to an annoying degree. Megan Riley and Nick Fiore of St. Mary’s wear their school uniforms. The four of us are attired exactly as we were when our photograph was taken in the county library Tuesday after school. The picture appeared in yesterday’s paper with an invitation to the public. Apparently, we were told, this gender equality is rare in debate competition, when more often than not both teams are wholly male.

  There are nearly fifty people in the audience, the spectators somewhat spaced apart. Most of the small crowd I can identify, though the announcement in the paper did seem to bring in a handful of unattached onlookers. My mother is there, and Benja, excused by the high school for this special event. There’s Mr. Westerly and Mr. Hickory, and Mrs. Flanagan the cafeteria cook. Lucille’s, Megan’s, and Nick’s parents and a slew of St. Mary’s faculty. For them, this is the all-important match that will indicate the parochial facility’s prowess in official competition. For us, our faculty and our families, this is the all-important match. My stung ego regarding the sparse crowd is quickly trounced by relief, an assuaging of my trembling stage fright, only for it to return with a vengeance when five minutes before start time half the school comes flooding through the doors, belatedly excused from classes to pack the place.

  When I got home from the photo session, I changed out of my good clothes and came down to the kitchen, where my beaming mother surprised me with a slice of chocolate cake and milk. I sat and ate, her across the table, and gradually she broached the subject. What did I think about B.J. coming with her to the debate competition?

  “No.”

  “He’ll behave himself. If I tell him to be quiet.”

  “You don’t know for sure.”

  “I do. If I really tell him. He’d be so proud to see his little brother up there on—”

  “He’ll act up! Or he’ll get loud! He’ll get loud when I stand to speak, cheering me or something! And then I’ll get all nervous, I’ll lose my train of thought and then I’ll—”

  “Okay!” She gently gestured for me to sit back down. “Okay,” she repeated. B.J. entered and spelled “cake” to my mother, a polite request, and she cut him a piece.

  “At this time of crisis in our nation,” Megan Riley at the lectern, “it is vital that we pull together. We have grimly observed the countries of Europe falling one by one to Hitler’s fascistic metastasis of the continent. But it is imperative that our own borders are secure before we fight to protect those of our allies, and that security is achieved through our solidarity as citizens of a unified democracy. The integrity of such a cohesive front is highly compromised by the anti-American sentiments of Communism. Given the rumored crimson tint of the
territory of Hawaii’s notorious International Longshore and Warehouse Union, one can only imagine the sort of Soviet party-line politics the state of Hawaii would bring to Capitol Hill.”

  I had only heard the word “union” once in my house. When I was in second grade I came home from school to find my father having some quiet tête-à-tête with Mr. Wright from the mill. They were in the living room, and I’d come in through the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. They never noticed me.

  “Nex they say Strike,” said my father. “An then the company bring in the scabs, and there I am out of a job.”

  “He’s gone,” said Mr. Wright. “Nobody asked for no union, nobody sent for no union man, he went back up North where he come from.”

  “Five in my family, I got five mouths to feed. They come down here whippin it up, playin, it ain’t no game to us.”

  “The niggers up near Birmingham goin red. You hear that? Communist organizin amongst the damn darkie sharecroppers before the Yankee trash come. Lazy black asses thinkin they oughta be paid like a white man.”

  “I heard they already been han-pickin the scabs. Just in case.”

  “No worry, he done packed up an gone. After we give him a little talkin-to.” Mr. Wright punched his right fist into his left palm, like I’d seen in a gangster picture show Benja snuck me into. The gesture looked funny with those two fingers Mr. Wright lost at the mill, and I covered my mouth lest the giggles give me away.

  At the lectern I gaze at the audience, briefly but, as instructed by Mr. Hickory, enough to indicate I have taken in each and every one of them. I inhale silently and deeply.

  “There has been much concern expressed by those opposed to Hawaiian statehood that two senators representing the sparsely populated Pacific archipelago would confer disproportionate, and thus unfair, federal political power to the infant state. These presumptions are based on some Hollywood image of remote, secluded islands. Hardly. Hawaii’s population according to the 1940 census was four hundred twenty-three thousand, more inhabitants than Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware, and Nevada.” From three-quarters near the back I notice someone has raised his hand in a V for Victory sign for me, and I smile to myself, seeing it’s Henry Lee.