The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  Rett, his complexion just a shade lighter than Eliot’s, blushes. “Doesn’t matter. Just when my generation comes into sex, sex equals death.” He runs his finger along the embossed letters on his Walkman.

  “Not safe sex.”

  Rett doesn’t look up.

  “Hey.” No response. “Hey.”

  Rett raises his face.

  “Not safe sex.”

  “They don’t like me!” He turns away, struggling to keep his voice low. “Girls.”

  “There’s time.”

  Rett says nothing.

  “I can tell you somethin but you won’t believe me. You gotta love yourself first before anybody else’ll love ya. And if they still don’t, it won’t matter cuz you’ll have yourself lovin you, which is more than most people have anyway.”

  Rett considers this. “Do you?”

  “Love you? You got to ask that?”

  “Love yourself.”

  Though it’s a reasonable question in light of the advice Dwight had just bestowed, the uncle is caught off guard. He gives the matter consideration. “Hmm. Guess I’m still workin on it.”

  “Oh so it’s all theoretical, you don’t really know if it works.” A little smile.

  “I stand by it as a good lesson to learn. That, and if you’re gonna read somebody else’s diary, make sure not to wear headphones so you can hear em when they walk through the door.” Rett laughs out loud, a heartier sound than Dwight has heard from him since the day he’d arrived at this airport four weeks ago.

  “Well.” The uncle smiles as he speaks. “I was sad and then I was mad. Guess onliest place to go from there is glad.”

  “That’s what you are now?”

  “I don’t know. You been livin with me a month, you tell me what I am.”

  Rett’s face is suddenly serious. “Really, really, really sad.”

  Dwight’s lips part. It had never occurred to him that the perpetual affliction he sees in his nephew might be exactly what Rett is reading in him. But before he has a chance to fully register this, the flight attendant announces the boarding of the back of the plane, which is precisely where Dwight’s and Rett’s free voucher seats are.

  9

  The overnight flight arrives ten minutes early, the lease of the Pontiac goes smoothly, and they are on the road by 7:30. Rett is upbeat and chatty, and for a while would comment on his surroundings with Dwight politely responding, but eventually the driver realizes his uncle needs space to absorb the impact of his sudden déjà vu, and they fall to a meditative silence for most of the two-and-a-half-hour drive. The first freeway sign mentioning Humble, still sixty miles away, causes each of them to catch his breath. At last the exit into town comes into view, and Rett turns off. Dwight glances at the Roman numeral clock on the big Episcopalian church. 10:10. “Too early to check in at the hotel. May as well go straight to the house.”

  As he guides Rett through the winding streets of his hometown, Dwight remembers the intense scene back in San Francisco and steels himself for whatever new emotions this trip might stir up for his nephew. A street sign: ROCK HILL ROAD. “Turn right.” Their hearts pounding.

  Halfway up the block Rett parks, and they cross the street to 124. When the Campbells were the occupants the house was white, the area below the front porch bricks of various earth colors. Now the building is all siding, a strange Halloween orange.

  “The windas off the porch is the livin room. Was. There on the second floor was our parents’ room, behind that the guestroom, behind that the room your daddy and me shared. First the double bed, then the twins.”

  Rett is mesmerized. Smiling, imagining it all.

  “Your daddy. He had some appetite. Little as he was, ate everything! And talked! Quiet after he grew up, but when he was small. Sharin that bed useta drive me nuts, I’m tryin to sleep and he would not stop babblin.”

  Rett laughs. “Why didn’t you move out? The guestroom?”

  Dwight is quiet a moment. “Your daddy finally did. Seven. Goin on eight.” The event a relatively recent entry into the memory book. Rett hadn’t gotten that far.

  “And that was Miss Onnie’s?”

  “That was Miss Onnie’s, your daddy’s buddy. Useta be bushes all along the border here.” Gone, replaced by a cheap green wire fence. “That yard was like a cat farm. After she died some family with little girls moved in. That’s the lass I knew a the place.”

  Rett studies the environs, correlating it with the information he has. Then looks beyond to the next yard. “That was Carl’s?”

  Though Dwight knows Carl’s name appears in the journal, it startles him to hear it from Rett’s lips. And now the uncle realizes that something within himself had kept him from seeing beyond Miss Onnie’s. He raises his eyes to the neighboring house.

  “Yep. That was the Talleys.” From where they stand, Dwight can view the backyard and front porch. The incident with Parker the Cat was finally the death knell of his friendship with Carl. Dwight had run home to find Eliot hysterical on their mother’s lap, she looking up at Dwight with a helplessness and terror he’d never seen in her, the first parental challenge she was not at all equipped to handle. Then Eliot became aware of his brother’s presence, waving wildly. “Get outa here, Dwight! Get outa here, Dwight!” The older brother ran sobbing upstairs to his bed. He could hear his mother crying with Eliot, and then her voice on the telephone. “Hello Miss—Missus Talley?” He never knew the upshot of that call, and for months after he would walk around the block, taking the long way home rather than pass by the Talleys. A year later when he did accidentally run into Carl, the latter had just glowered at his former friend. Only once does Dwight remember exchanging glances with Carl’s father after that, who then rotated his face slightly in a pretense that he hadn’t seen Dwight, and another time with Carl’s mother, who had stared at Dwight, a strange look as if she were trying to remember something, and then she did, a pain crossing her face, and she turned and disappeared into her house.

  And now as he gazes at the Talley front porch, Dwight’s last memory of the family was when he was walking home from school in the eleventh grade. It was spring, and Carl sat on his front porch swing not swinging, his feet propped on the balustrade, ankles crossed, reading a comic book. He had been a cute boy, and had grown into a handsome young man. By this time his mother had had both her mastectomies, which had done little good, and had been brought home to die. As Dwight neared the home, he could hear Mrs. Talley calling out. “Carl. Could you get me a glass of water please?” The rented hospital bed was pushed next to the open and screened living room windows, the venetian blinds drawn. “Carl?” Her voice weak but loud enough for Dwight to hear on the street. Without thinking, Dwight had stopped in front of the house, staring, waiting for Carl to come to his dying mother’s aid. Carl, absorbed in Captain America, had not batted an eyelash. Then he looked up, only his eyes, glaring at Dwight. After a few moments Carl brought his focus back to the comic, turning the page.

  “Dwight!”

  The uncle and nephew turn to see an obese white woman running toward them.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s you!”

  Dwight smiles, but his confused frown belies him.

  “You don’t reckonize me? Well! Guess I have put on a few pounds since you was here. Lucy! Lucy Barton!”

  “Lucy!”

  “Well, Lucy Winthrop.”

  “How are you?”

  “Aw, can’t complain. When’dja get back?”

  “Jus this mornin, we only here for overnight. This my nephew, Rett.”

  “Oh my God, I shoulda known that, ain’t he Eliot all over! Well, what brung yaw home?”

  “He wanted to see where his daddy grew up.”

  “Aw.”

  “You still livin up the street?”

  “Naw, moved over to north end wunst I got m
arried, but after Daddy died my son Josh took over the house, keepin it in the family. Course Mommy died not long after we was outa school.”

  “I remember.”

  “So Josh jus had a new baby. My daughter-in-law still recoverin from the cesarean so I’m staying here a while helpin out. I’m only forty-four an a grammaw eleven times over!” She beams. “Now how about you? Wife? Kids?”

  “Neither.”

  “Good. If it ain’t one headache it’s the other.”

  “I didn’t go to no goddamn race tracks!”

  The screen door to the Campbells’ former home slams open. A thin black man rushes out, charging by Dwight, Rett, and Lucy, storming down the street. The door flies open again and an equally thin white woman steps onto the porch.

  “You ever get in my fuckin bread n butter money again, I’ll break your ugly neck!” He is far down the street. “You hear?” He turns the corner. She doesn’t look at the three people on the sidewalk just feet away from her house any more than the man did, blind beyond their own rage. She goes back inside, banging the door behind her. After a few moments’ silence, Lucy shakes her head.

  “Whole neighborhood’s changed.”

  She notices Dwight glancing in the direction of the Talleys’ former home. “He was there by hisself a long time after the wife died. Well, that Carl, guess he there with his daddy for senior year but then gone away to college firs chance. Don’t think he even come back for the holidays. An then wunst the ole man passed, him an the sister fightin over the property. Neither of em wanted it, jus the money to sell it. So I heard anyway.” She lowers her voice, though no one else is on the street. “I also heard that Carl drinks too much. Well, you know them businessmen.” She brightens. “Oh, Dwight, you gotta see Florida!”

  They follow her up and across the street. The Barton house, incredibly, is even more of a shambles than Dwight remembers. The porch is at a precarious angle with a huge hole, big enough for a small child to fall through. A good third of its roof slats are gone, the gutter broken in half and hanging. The dirty toys in the yard have increased exponentially, and a glimpse through a window reveals a vertigo-inducing chaos in the living room. A few feet up from the chimney, which had been sealed and never used as far as Dwight can recall, stands a satellite dish. “They get a hundred n eight channels!” Lucy says. “Wait here.”

  She runs to the screen door, which is torn. As she opens it, several kittens scamper out. “Them are Miss Onnie’s people,” says Lucy.

  Her guests look at her, confused.

  “Member when she died, left all them cats? I knew the city was jus gonna take em, put em all to sleep. So I grabbed a couple. These are the grankids. Or great-great-grans, who knows.” And she dashes inside. A little girl and little boy come to the window, gawking at the visitors. A few minutes later Lucy returns holding a newborn, the child and its blankets immaculately clean as if her grandmother had just taken her from some protective bubble in the house. Dwight smiles and looks at Rett, who also smiles politely but seems distracted by the cats.

  “Wake up, Florida Jean,” Lucy coos. “Come on, little girl. Dontchu wanna say hi to Uncle Dwight?”

  “She’s a doll baby.”

  “Ain’t she?” The children from the window run out, stopping in their tracks next to Lucy.

  “This is Ashley. An this is Woody.”

  “Hello.” But they just stare, half hiding behind their grandmother’s legs. Lucy tenderly plays with the baby’s lower lip, then looks up. “Hey Dwight. If you got the time, whyn’t you go see Roof in the hospital?”

  Dwight tenses. When he regains his voice: “Roof’s in the hospital?”

  “He got the black lung. God, been out there to Marion since he was thirteen. Had to quit a few years ago. Well he couldn’t hardly breathe, guess it a miracle he survived this long. Visitin hours two to four, seven to nine.”

  “It bad?”

  “It’s bad.”

  “You like kitties?” Ashley asks Rett. She and the boy have moved closer to the young man, who is stooping, playing with a tan kitten.

  “I wouldn’t wanna upset him, Lucy. Been a long time. Since we was kids.”

  “All the more reason.”

  “Can I have a kitten?”

  Rett had blurted it out. He and the children are sitting in a circle playing with two kittens between them. The little ones look up at Dwight, their eyes pleading in Rett’s defense as if he were their age.

  “I tell ya what,” says Lucy, “I’d be fine gettin ridda one of em. Look at this zoo!”

  “I know we’d need a carrier for the plane. I’ll pay you back, Uncle Dwight.”

  The elder shakes his head. “Too risky. You know I got my two cats. They was brother and sister, but a new baby? Jealous, they might kill the little thing.”

  “Oh.” Rett looks down, childlike. His ally Ashley stares at Dwight, pouty lips, shining eyes.

  “Well. We better get ta goin.”

  “Well I am so tickled I run into you, Dwight. Where yaw stayin?”

  “The Holiday Inn.”

  Lucy shakes her head, her disapproval that he has wasted his money with all the friends who could have taken him in. “Listen. They got the phone book there?”

  “I imagine they do.”

  “Well I’m listed. The phone here, look under ‘Joshua Barton.’ Or ‘Floyd Winthrop’ for home.”

  “I will. It sure was good to see you, Lucy.”

  “Wa’n’t that luck? I jus happen to be stayin over my ole house the day yaw come by. We’re some lucky people!”

  Dwight and Rett walk around, the uncle showing him the ghosts. Where D’Angelo’s used to be, where the old Messengill house had stood, the empty lot where the beautiful old segregated movie house had been. They stand on the bridge, the creek below flanked by the cement levies.

  “When I was a kid the backyards come all the way down, meet the crick, and every coupla years a flood. So they put up the flood-control walls. Ugly, ain’t they.”

  “The tire swing?”

  “Up that way. Gone, the dock gone.” They gaze at the rushing rivulet. “Musta rained a few days. Water pretty high on the walls, movin swift.”

  Upstream a white man and boy stand with fishing rods, water to their shins, hopeful in the post-storm gush.

  They have lunch at the hotel, barely half-capacity, then check in to their room. Dwight finds the slim county phone directory in a drawer.

  “I’ma go ahead and call the florist, put in the order.”

  In the afternoon they walk to the Banneker School, which with integration had gone through several transformations, conversions to offices and at some point a Head Start, though at present it seems to have been vacant for years. “That was the auditorium slash gym. The principal’s office there. Here was the first-grade room. I had ole Miss Thurman but your daddy got Miss McAfee, fresh outa college.” They are in the empty gravel parking lot. Rett walks around the grounds. “The cafeteria below. Useta hear the white kids complainin bout their lunch. Not us, our ladies give us good home cookin.”

  There’s a narrow overhang, and Rett leans against the building under it, a modicum of shade to counteract the oppressive mid-afternoon sun.

  “Remember all that fightin up in Boston a few years ago? All the fuss over bussin kids to integrate the schools? Funny, I remember this big family, Browns, bussed way down off the mountain, passin all the white schools along the way. Nunna the white people complained those days, bussin to segregate.” Dwight stares at the steps to the main entrance, remembering Eliot running down them, excited about another second-grade perfect spelling test.

  “Was Benjamin Banneker gay?”

  Dwight turns to his nephew. “I don’t know. I never heard that.”

  Rett says nothing, wipes his brow with his forearm.

  “Why?”

&nbs
p; “Well. Your cats.”

  Dwight frowns, then laughs out loud. “You think I named my cats after gay people?”

  “George Washington Carver was, right?”

  “The evidence points to it.” Dwight stoops, plays with the gravel. “I was jus namin em after black geniuses, I wasn’t really thinkin about sexual orientation.” He looks at his nephew. “I didn’t know you were such a cat lover. Wantin a kitten.”

  “I thought it might be a descendant of Parker.”

  Dwight stiffens, reminded again that Rett has perused his most private thoughts. “Parker never had no litters.”

  “All the cats Miss Onnie had, she couldn’t’ve got all the females fixed.”

  Dwight looks at Rett. Then turns away, staring into the street.

  “Uncle Dwight. I didn’t read everything, only when I saw ‘Eliot.’ But I sure noticed the word ‘Parker’ popped up a lot.” He uses his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “You were just a kid. You gotta forgive yourself.”

  Dwight turns to his nephew, then looks at the ground, his breath coming quickly.

  “You brought your swim trunks like I toldja?” He doesn’t look up but presumes Rett is nodding. “Maybe we go back to the hotel, you take a dip. I gotta make a phone call.”

  Dwight indulges a moment in the air-conditioning of their room before pulling out his address book. He really should have the number memorized in case of emergencies, but truthfully he takes pride in the fact that he hasn’t had to call his sponsor often enough to have learned the contact information by heart. In his wallet, he finds the long-distance calling card he’d purchased back in San Francisco.

  He’s off the phone by the time Rett walks in from his swim looking like a zombie, the lack of sleep from the flight coupled with the harsh sunrays.

  “I could use a little nap before dinner too,” his uncle remarks.

  They each have a double bed and have lain on them only a minute when Dwight speaks. “I called my sponsor.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Miguel. Very nice man.” Dwight had closed the curtains, a narrow stream of light seeping through. “He said if ya want. He’ll hold your kitten for the summer.”