The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  “So what’s this internship all about?”

  “Oh I don’t know. Probably a lot of xeroxing, gofer stuff. Whatever’s too tedious for the real personnel.” He pushes his beef around his rice and onions.

  “You know I’m a school janitor.”

  “You wrote that in the letter when you sent my graduation check. Thank you again for that.”

  “My hours are 7 a.m. to 10:30, 12:30 to 5.”

  “You come home for lunch.”

  “No.” Dwight takes a sip of water, considering before he speaks. “I have meetings. Narcotics Anonymous.” His eyes glued on his nephew.

  “That’s great, uncle.”

  Dwight gazes at Rett a few moments before nodding. “They’re at eleven every day except Sunday, Sunday the meeting’s at four. So we wouldn’t be able to do our Saturday outing until after I finish at noon.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Weekdays I’m up by 5:30, out by 6:45. I don’t know what your schedule is but I’ll try not to wake you.”

  “I should be getting up around the time you leave anyway.” He smiles. “Thank you for saying yes, Uncle Dwight. I’m really happy I’m here.”

  Dwight gazes at Eliot’s grown son. “I’m really proud of you, nephew.”

  “I’m really proud of you, uncle.”

  They take the California line cable car west and then walk the several blocks home. Dwight is putting the doggie bags into the fridge when he hears Rett exclaiming from the living room,“You have a VCR!” The younger runs to his bedroom and returns with a videotape.

  “Looks like you have a VCR too.”

  Rett chuckles. “Hardly. The Judge thinks they’re a waste of money. Some guy at school made em, sold em.”

  Dwight is amused by his nephew’s moniker for his eminent mother. Rett sticks the tape into the machine. The uncle has not stayed current with music, but he likes the sound of this band that keeps making references to The Funk.

  “Song’s old,” says Rett. “’Seventy-six. But look at Bootsy with that bass!” And Rett air-guitars.

  Look at all of them, thinks Dwight. The song is called “Stretchin’ Out,” and what strikes Dwight, besides the highly skilled musicians and the near obscene relationship one of the guitarists seems to have with his instrument, is how happy everyone is. He has seen many bands play, the members having a good time, but this differs from the utter jubilation he witnesses on the screen now. And Rett seems happy, finally a truly unbridled smile. Andi’s smile, Dwight realizes, her chromosomes apparently having not gone completely to waste. Nephew and uncle bounce to the beat, playing the tape five times before Rett says he probably should get to bed. It’s eleven, and that he has made it this far after his long traveling day coupled with the time difference is a testament to the astounding energy of youth.

  Rett asks Dwight if he has any milk, remarking that he usually drinks a glass before bed. “All I have out there’s juice. Cranberry, pineapple. That do ya?”

  “I’ll just have water then, thanks.”

  “Okay. I’ll pick up milk tomorrow and remember to stay stocked. Come ere.”

  Dwight shows his nephew the water dispenser on the fridge door. Rett stares.

  “I can’t believe you still have this.”

  Dwight is spare about his refrigerator adornments. On the freezer one item: a plaque with the Serenity Prayer, a gift from his N.A. sponsor on the first anniversary of his being clean. But what Rett refers to is the article taped to the lower door: a crayon drawing. When he was about six, Rett had sent it to his uncle. Two figures, an adult holding the hand of a child, supertitled in a little boy’s scrawl: “Uncle Dwight” and “Everett.”

  Dwight is moved himself, remembering the argument. Keith threatening to throw out Dwight’s things and Dwight countering with a suggestion that Keith throw it all the fuck out for all he cared. But Keith did not throw it all out. Dwight had found the drawing later, gingerly preserved by his friend, wrapped in cellophane and placed in its own box. Now he touches the curving lower right corner of the yellowing paper, where his nephew had placed his tiny signature just as he had seen his uncle do in his own work. With his fingers Dwight irons it out, but as soon as he lets go, it stubbornly rolls up again.

  4

  The adjustment to his quiet, isolated existence as evoked by the sudden presence of an extended-stay houseguest is not initially so monumental a transformation as Dwight had feared. For the remainder of the workweek he resumes his regular morning routine of rising early to meditate on the day that awaits him, eating his bran cereal, showering, doing a little sketching, and feeding the cats before leaving for work. When he returns at 5:30, Rett is winding down after his own workday by playing his guitar or watching MTV. Dwight cooks simple meals, and when over dinner he asks how things are at the law firm, Rett invariably shrugs. “Yesterday I got to xerox for the white lawyer, today I got to xerox for the black lawyer. Never a dull moment.”

  On Friday, Dwight comes home to overhear his nephew in his room talking on the phone to Indianapolis. The last time Dwight had dialed that number, eons ago, it had become yet another lecture about his using. With these episodes, Dwight’s indignation was consistent, regardless of whether he was telling the truth or lying. Well it had been two years now, his longest clean stretch by far and the first time he had admitted to being an addict—not just saying the words (he’d gone the Twelve Step route in the past with little success) but finally accepting them. So he considered the possibility that Rett’s reaching out to him was a sign that it was time Dwight reconnect with family in general.

  Walking into the kitchen to prepare dinner, he notices he’d forgotten to turn the calendar page, the mild disruption of hosting a visitor apparently having caused it to slip his mind. The large squares are mostly empty, Rett’s arrival three days ago on the last of May being the only event notated the entire month. As he lifts the page to June the calendar falls, flipping back to February where, again, there is only one appointment. Friday the 11th: “Ms. Devers’s class.”

  Two days before, he had entered Ms. Devers’s room post-dismissal to find the words to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on the chalkboard, obviously related to Black History Month. The second-grade teacher had rushed in. “Don’t erase it! I want to keep it up until they’ve learned it. Hopefully next week.”

  “Okay.” She had noticed Dwight’s smile as he gazed at it.

  “You know it?”

  “Negro National Anthem. We sang it every school day.” He began to sweep the floor.

  “Did you go to school in the South?”

  “Maryland.”

  “Did you.” She searches for the word. “Participate in anything? Sit-ins?”

  “Well. I went to the March on Worshinton.” Gum stuck hard to the floor. He gets his scraper.

  “The 1963 March on Washington? I have a dream?” He looked up at Ms. Devers’s stunned face.

  The next thing Dwight knew, he was lecturing before her class. The children’s understanding of the march was solely through Martin Luther King’s finale speech, but Dwight informed them there were speakers representing many civil rights organizations, and he patiently described each one, among them James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Whitney Young of the National Urban League, Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and A. Philip Randolph who had been the man to imagine the march way back in 1941, the onetime president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters of which Dwight’s father had been a member, a man whom Dwight had had the honor of meeting as a child when the famed union organizer was a guest in his family’s home. The lecturer also gave much credit to the unsung organizer of the march, Bayard Rustin. Needing very much to keep his job, Dwight knew better than to go on a tangent before the seven-year-olds, albeit a relevant one, in c
larifying the irony that after Rustin’s well-substantiated commitment to the struggle against prejudice (his astonishingly successful planning and execution of that march of hundreds of thousands being only the most widely known of his many achievements) was undermined by prejudice within the movement regarding his sexual orientation. So Dwight evaded the details while stressing that there would have been no March on Washington without A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, trusting that the brightest of the students would do further research on their own. The children asked, Were you close to the stage, Mr. Campbell? Closer than most. I had binoculars so I could see well. Who went with you, Mr. Campbell? Well, I still lived near my father then. My mother had died, and my father. My father was having some health problems, so I went alone. Did you meet Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Campbell? No, but I got to talk briefly to Mr. Randolph. And I met some very nice people in the crowd. That’s what the day was all about. Brotherhood, solidarity. Do you know what that means?

  When he finished his discourse, Ms. Devers asked the children to thank Mr. Campbell, which they did with enthusiastic applause, and Dwight left the classroom, closing the door behind him, for a moment leaning his back against the wall to catch his breath. The memories stirred up, that brown paper bag wrapped like a present. He would have to write them in his book. He was deciding whether to also chronicle the last hour. The book was intended to document the past rather than the present, but wouldn’t he like to keep such a fine day as today? Before he resolved the matter, the school nurse approached him to report that a fourth grader had suffered a severe diarrhetic episode so he had better bring his extra-strength cleaners to the cordoned-off second-floor boys’ room.

  **

  That brown paper bag wrapped like a present. I opened it.

  Aw.

  It’s nothing.

  Aw.

  I got it from Goodwill, nothing.

  Look out the window with my new binoculars. The trailers.

  Don’t. Neighbors’ll think your spying. But Keith smiling, I give him a kiss. Then beef stew, his specialty. Eating not saying nothing but I feel his eyes, I know where he’s going again.

  You just leaving from here in the morning? You ain’t got to go back to Lewis, pick up nothing?

  Just leave from here. On the way.

  And come back tomorrow, after?

  Figure the crowds make the traffic bad. Probably wait till late, drive in the night, get back early Thursday. My face staring down at my stew whole time. He quiet awhile. Easy, easy.

  You ain’t even gonna ask me?

  I know he wanna know why I ain’t asked he wanna come with me. I say nothing. What, I think I say nothing he gonna drop it? Well I knew saying nothing just upset him more, that’s the meanness I had them days. But in my head I say I’m being the tolerant. Patient.

  It’s a historical moment.

  That make me laugh.

  It is!

  For colored people.

  For everyone! Whole country!

  Tearing apart my buttered bread to dip. Wisht he’d a made his biscuits. Keith got the knack, baking.

  Malcolm X called it the Farce on Washington.

  Oh now you gonna throw up Malcolm X to me?

  No! I don’t know why I said that! I was just bringing it up. I was just wondering what you thought about that.

  I don’t say nothing. That’s a black argument, black people, I don’t got to discuss that with him.

  I make you food. I feed you, I take care of you, you can’t even talk to me.

  I can just go back to Lewis tonight. I don’t got to stay here.

  No! Stay.

  We don’t say nothing else till I finish. I finish but he still eating, he eating slow, know he planning what to say next. I lean back in my chair, toothpick in my mouth. Staring at him.

  There’s gonna be white people there. Didn’t the buttons have a white hand shaking a black hand? Brotherhood.

  Twirl my toothpick.

  Well. Maybe I’ll just go by myself.

  Free country. Then I laugh, thinking whole reason we having this march is because it is not.

  Silly. Two different trucks leaving the same house going to the same place stead a the people riding together.

  You ain’t going with me.

  Then he gather up the dishes quick like to wash them, used to be we wash them together. How it get to be this? Me some nasty man beating his wife.

  Well I look back on it now, it was because of that pain I had, that sad turned to mad. Keith was the bigger person, feeling hurt but he just take it. But them days all I do is look at his face see weakness. All I think is Start your goddam crying I walk out.

  Spring before watching the TV, getting a load of Birmingham. Fire hoses, dogs. Sitting close on the couch, but then I pull away. I pull away the days I hate white people. Keith hurt but he just keep his eyes on the TV. Keith so understanding, so understanding them days I hate white and I hate him for being white and I hate him the worst for being so goddam understanding.

  That night, night before the march we fuck. Least I owe him, thank him for the binoculars. He try to put loving into it like the old days but to me it’s nothing. Morning I leave early, it ain’t light out. I don’t bother trying not to wake him. I done that before, what happens is he wake anyway and act hurt I was leaving trying not to wake him. He ask do I want coffee and I say thanks and he know I ain’t about to sit down with him so he go on put it in the thermos. Thanks. Head out to the truck. Corner of my eye I see him at his window staring out but I never turn to him, I pull the stick shift.

  Hours early. Already the crowds! College kids and parents with kids and old people. And white people like Keith said, but mostly this a sea a black faces, coming from Humble Md. and Lewis W.Va. I ain’t seen so many black! We are waiting to march because it was a march, not just a rally like most young people today think. Some people singing, “Little Light of Mine” and “Eyes on the Prize” I’m feeling good! I can’t remember last time feeling good like this, like forgetting all the bad awhile, the world ain’t such a terrible place.

  Hi, he say to me.

  Hi.

  Where you from?

  Maryland.

  Oh, right crost the border.

  Well, the Appalachian part. Few hours west.

  Oh.

  Where you from?

  Southeast. Africa. He grin. Got a nice smile.

  We at the monument and the march is late, and suddenly the march is going. I’m a fast walker and I find myself moving toward the front. I get a glance of Martin Luther King and I feel my heart flip, like celebrity. But then. Mr. Randolph! Oh he older but I recognize him! Marching—his dream finally realized!

  Mr. Randolph! Mr. Randolph!

  Yes?

  You probably don’t remember me. I’m Dwight Campbell. You stayed in our house once, in Humble Md.

  Uh-huh.

  I was a little boy. You stayed in our house on the way to meet President Roosevelt. About the other March on Washington. You recited Shakespeare in our living room! Winter of discontent!

  Uh-huh. Then Bayard Rustin say something to Mr. Randolph. At the time I didn’t know who Bayard Rustin was but looking back now, sure it was him. I feel warm in the face, I know Mr. Randolph don’t remember me and maybe the people nearby thinks I’m a crank. But I’m glad I said what I said. Everybody looking to Dr. King, I’m glad Mr. Randolph know somebody admired him too.

  A few minutes later Mr. Randolph turn around. Hey.

  Sir? I say. He talking to me?

  You still drawing the pictures?

  I wanna bawl right there. He remember that! Yes sir, I lie because lying seem the polite thing.

  The rally after, I pull out my binoculars. Notice this little girl, her daddy holding her up to see. She staring at me, my binoculars. I let her see through them
she grin ear to ear. Just when I start to worry it be hard to get them back from her her daddy say, Okay, give them back and thank the nice man, which she do even though she don’t want to.

  When Mr. Randolph speaks I look through the lenses. I see him clear! Now, I have a dream. It was stirring. But I recollect it so well because the news played it over and over, like all them charter trains and planes and 2,000 buses come just to hear one 15-min. speech. But what stayed with me was Mr. Randolph’s words, We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom. I have heard that there was people who was disconcerted with the leaders because there was some censorship of SNCC, the part where they wanted to criticize the Kennedy administration. But massive moral revolution sound to me like Mr. Randolph wasn’t holding back nothing.

  When it’s all over, hundreds of thousands and somehow he find me again.

  Hello!

  Hello.

  I’m Lyle. (I don’t remember what he said but I feel like he deserve a name so I’m giving him one.)

  I’m Dwight.

  Dwight. You like to stop in a little after-march party in Anacostia?

  I take the bus with Lyle. If the march was black, this neighborhood is ten times blacker! Southeast D.C., Africa like he say and ain’t no white men in pith helmets coming in to bother us neither. The party is in the basement of some house. It is packed, people from the march, happy and inspired. Nothing but men. Nothing but black men. And it take me just a little while to figure this out. Nothing but black homosexual men. I ain’t never been in a place like this!

  Dwight, says Lyle. Lyle and I drinking rum and Coke. Dwight, how long you in town?

  Oh I’m going back tonight.

  Oh. The music is “Heat Wave” and “Up on the Roof” and “Green Onions” and a new song I like. What’s that? I ask. “Fingertips” says another man, not Lyle. That harmonica? Some little boy playing it. A little blind boy!

  There are men dancing like couples and this is all new to me.

  Well, says Lyle, connecting his eyes to mine.