by Terry Kay
“Wait up a minute,” Dempsey said.
We walked together up the street, toward the parking lot, Dempsey waddling like a man with a sore back. Dempsey was in his early thirties, but had already been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He had an Irishman’s disposition, a mix of anger and melancholy. As a young man he had been a boxer. There was rumor he had killed a man in the ring, and had been haunted for years over it.
“I’m glad you did what you did,” Dempsey mumbled at last.
“How do you know what I did?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s out.”
“Didn’t take long, did it?” I said. “All I had to do was wait for my check. Twenty minutes, maybe. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen news travel in that place.”
A smile coated Dempsey’s face. “The old man’s having a fit,” he said. “He reamed Hoagie’s ass, and that’s something I would’ve paid to see.” He glanced at me. “Hoagie stand up for you?”
“Didn’t say a word,” I answered.
He spit a laugh. “The spineless bastard. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve made that same little visit with him. Didn’t stand up for me, either.” He chuckled. “How’d you like that little door-closing trick?”
“Scared the hell out of me,” I admitted.
“What it’s supposed to do,” he said. “I’d been warned. I thought it was funny.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“To get called on Crawford’s carpet?” he replied. “Well, it was a little bit in the same vein as you. I wanted to do a profile on Martin Luther King, Jr., take a ride with the Freedom Riders, see what it was all about from the other side.”
“But you’re still here,” I said.
“Yeah, I am. I’m a patient man. There’s more than several ways to skin a cat. I’ll have my moment.”
“I hope you do,” I said.
We were at the parking lot. He stopped beside a blue Plymouth. “You got a car?” he asked.
“I ride the bus,” I told him.
“Beats this piece of junk,” he said. He looked gently at me. “I hope you weren’t upset by the story I wrote. Nothing personal about it. I admire any man who makes a career out of studying Joel Chandler Harris, and for what it’s worth, I think you told the absolute truth, but you’ve been tainted, and you’d better get used to it.”
“Your story didn’t bother me,” I said. “I thought it was a little strange you didn’t mention I worked for the paper, but that was all.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said brightly. “Got axed.”
I laughed. “Like me.”
“Like you,” he said. “Let it be a lesson. Sometimes the best material winds up in the hell box.” He opened the door to his car. “Come see me sometime,” he added.
When I arrived at my apartment, I found the letter propped against a sugar dish on the kitchen table, placed there by Jack. It was from Marie Fitzpatrick.
Cole,
I saw your picture in the Boston Globe, on the front page. I was stunned, and frightened. Your fame finally found you, but why did it have to be so terrible? You should have married me. We’d be making babies, not headlines. I would have taken care of you. I worry about you. Don’t let them get to you. They will, if they can. Poor Cole Bishop. You won’t even know what’s happening. Go to the library, Cole. Pick out a book, one that begins with “Once upon a time…” Read about fairy Godmothers or laughing elves pulling pranks on cranky old men. Find something that ends happily ever after. We won’t, Cole. Not us. You’re famous now. And me? I’m just waiting. Did I ever mention it?I read my own palm on the night of our first date—after you dumped me unceremoniously back at my front door, leaving me to wish for erotic dreams of you when I finally fell asleep. I have a short lifeline. I should be afraid, but I’m not. I think it’s wonderful to know things before they happen. Please be careful my famous, innocent friend. There are still many things in your path, still many surprises, before this is finished.
I love you.
SIXTEEN
Once, in his childhood, Cole had been with the Darby twins— William and Carl—at the cotton gin in Crossover, and he had watched as they taunted a young black boy named Fremont, telling him they would pay him a nickel to hambone. He had not known what it meant to hambone and he had asked Toby. It’s when the colored slap their hands on their legs and chest, making it sound like skin music, Toby had explained in a whisper that made Cole believe Toby was annoyed with the Darby twins.
Fremont had tucked his head shyly, had said, Can’t do no hambone. Don’t know how.
And William—or Carl, he did not remember which—had sneered, You a nigger. Every nigger on Earth knows how to hambone. You better hambone, or we gonna whip your butt.
Toby had interceded. You boys leave him alone, or it’s gonna be me doing the butt-whipping, he had warned. Then, gently to Fremont: You go on and find Mr. Philips and stay with him.
Cole did not know why the memory of the Darby twins came back to him as he prepared his lunch—potato pancakes covered in applesauce and a dollop of sour cream—though he guessed it was because his writing was hurdling him back over time, and the distance from where he was and where he was headed was the same as a lake too large to see across, but one that invited rock-skipping. The memories were like that, like rock-skipping—the rock striking the water’s surface, making circles, then striking again farther out. By chance, the rock had struck where the Darby twins were residing in the history of his life.
It also made him think of the years of the Darby twins, when the echo of the second world war was still faintly heard and all about them change was blowing as invisibly as the wind—change they could not see or sense, change Marie Fitzpatrick would later warn about in her graduation speech.
In small farming communities, farmers still packed their wagons high-up with cotton for near-by gins, still hand-pulled corn in autumn. Blacks, and whites, still hired out to do field labor, the way Fremont and his family worked for Doug Philips. Canning plants still operated in season. Electricity was still new enough to cause shivers of excitement. Boys still played pasture baseball and football, still fished creeks, still trapped rabbits and hunted for squirrels with single-shot 22s, still made walks into such nearby towns as Overton on Saturdays, still gave in to dreams standing in front of dime store windows, wishing for the joy of cheap treasures.
The years of the Darby twins had been restless ones for Cole. His dreams were not of dime store trinkets, but of adventures he read about. And he had been an unashamed pretender, a talker, giving way to imagination and earning a reputation of telling tall tales.
The thought of it made him smile, there in his home in Vermont, so far away from the Darby twins and a black boy named Fremont.
He remembered the men at the cotton gin laughing at him, prodding him to re-tell stories that amused them. Remembered them saying, Ain’t nobody like that boy.
Then—in that distant time—such talk had left him with a smug feeling.
He wondered what had happened to Fremont and to the Darby twins.
He napped after his lunch, but only for a short time. Tanya Berry woke him with her call, asking about his state of health.
He told her he was regaining his strength.
Are you writing? she asked.
I have been, he answered. I think today will be the last day of it.
What does that mean? she asked.
It means what it means, he replied.
You’ve got a snappish tone, she said.
I’m speaking to a pushy woman, he countered.
You’re speaking to the one person who knows you better than anyone here, she said cheerfully. You’re speaking to your spiritual advisor.
Oh? he said. Is that what you are?
Now you understand our relationship, she replied. Want to have dinner tonight? Mark’s going out of town for a couple of days.
Sure, he said. If it’s all right with Mark.
She laug
hed. My God, Cole, I don’t think it would bother Mark if we curled up nude under a blanket in front the fireplace. He knows about you.
Knows what? he said.
That you’re impotent.
Where did you get that tidbit of information? he asked.
I made it up.
Why?
So Mark wouldn’t care if we curled up nude under a blanket in front of the fireplace. Now, where do you want to have dinner?
Arnie’s, he said.
Good, she replied. Seven o’clock?
Seven, he said.
Awake, he went into his office and sat at his desk and began to write the words that he knew would bother him.
December 27, afternoon
The greatest worry I had following the killing of Etta Hemsley was personal: my family. I knew the news would frighten them, my mother especially. When I called her the night of my firing from the newspaper I learned I had underestimated her reaction. She was more than frightened; she was terrified.
“Why, Cole?” she asked with desperation. “Why would you put yourself in a situation like that, where it could have been you who was killed?”
I tried to explain it was a coincidence, that I had simply wandered into the group out of curosity.
“Has anything else happened?” she asked anxiously.
I thought of telling her about the firing, but decided against it, knowing it would cause grief. It was something that needed said face-to-face, though my pause in answering must have alerted her.
“Something has happened, hasn’t?” she said fretfully. “What?”
“Nothing,” I told her. “Just talk, a lot of talk.”
“Well, if you think it’s the talk out there, you should be here,” she said. “Ben Colquitt called, nosing around for a story in that sorry excuse of a newspaper he owns, but I told him what you just said—that you just happened to be there. He made some smart remark about how young people were getting crazier by the day, trying to stir up trouble. I told him he’d better not be talking about you. Paper’s coming out today. I guess we’ll find out.”
“How’s Daddy?” I asked.
“He’s bothered, but he’s not saying much,” she said. “Toby’s the one I’m worried about. He won’t take anybody talking about you. And the girls are scared somebody could hurt you.”
“Tell them I’m all right,” I said. “Tell them to call me.”
“I will,” my mother replied in a voice of concern. She asked, “When are you coming home?”
“Soon,” I told her.
“You stay away from crowds, honey,” my mother begged.
“I will,” I promised.
I would go home the next morning.
My mother called early. Anguish and anger was in her voice.
“They burned Jovita’s house,” she said in a painful cry.
I remember feeling stunned and weak. “Who did it?” I asked.
My mother sobbed, fought to control herself. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “It could have been anybody.”
“Why?” I said.
“The paper came out yesterday,” she answered, her anger rising. “Ben Colquitt said your involvement in what went on in Atlanta started when you were in high school and became friends with that girl.”
“Marie?” I said.
“Her, yes,” my mother replied bitterly. “He wrote about the speech she made at graduation—the one I told you would cause trouble—and he blamed it on Jovita. He said she was trying to integrate the schools by getting that girl to teach her children.”
“My God,” I said in astonishment. “There’s not a bit of truth in that. She made Marie stop teaching them. Don’t you remember that? She said so in her speech.”
“It doesn’t matter,” my mother argued. “All of it led to this.”
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked.
There was a pause. I could hear my mother’s deep breathing, could hear her swallow a sob.
“One of the boys—the youngest one—was burned,” she whispered. “I don’t know how bad.”
“Littlejohn?” I asked.
“I think that’s his name,” my mother replied.
I remember the jolt of shock and the sudden wave of nausea that struck me. (Can feel it at this moment, a chill on my arms and across my shoulders.) I could see the face of Littlejohn as he laughed over my telling the story of an orange turtle. (Can see him at this moment, the shine of merriment in his eyes.) I thought of Marie, thought of how she had yearned to perform a miracle in the garage of her parents, and how that miracle had ended because of the power of fear.
“I’ll be home in a couple of hours,” I told my mother.
“Don’t,” she said sternly. “It’ll just make things worse.”
“I’m sorry, Mama, but I have to,” I said. “I have to see it.” I hung up before she could object.
A small gathering of neighbors was lingering around the smouldering ruins of Jovita’s home. They stood, slumped, their heads bowed, and the expression they wore is something I have never forgotten. It was as though their spirit—whatever throbbed in them as life—had disappeared in the spirals of smoke rising up from deep-buried embers. When I saw them, I was reminded of photographs from the war, where stunned survivors of bombings seemed incapable of moving from the heaps of devastation around them. Two of the women were picking through the rubble, carefully pulling out items cool enough to touch. I saw one holding a scorched dress.
Toby was there, waiting for me. He was standing beside a man who seemed vaguely familiar. My age, I thought. Dressed in a suit a size too large for him, leaving the look of a man who has lost weight.
“You remember Moses Elder?” Toby asked quietly.
I thought: Moses. Yes, Moses, that was his name. My mind flashed to seeing him with Marie and the children of Jovita.
“I don’t believe we ever met,” I said. I offered my hand to Moses. He took it in a weak, uncertain grip.
“No sir, I don’t think so,” he mumbled.
“Moses works at Higginbottom’s Funeral Home,” Toby added.
I wanted to tell him that I knew of him from Marie, that I had seen him with her. I did not. I said, instead, “I’m sorry about this. I truly am.”
Moses dipped his head in a nod, but did not reply.
“Nothing you can do here,” Toby said. “We better go on home.”
“How’s Jovita?” I asked, directing the question to Moses.
“Doing well as she can,” he said. He turned to look at the remains of the house.
“Littlejohn?” I said. “What about him?”
“Don’t know about him, yet,” Moses answered. “Got burned pretty bad. He was trying to find his mama when his shirt caught on fire.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“At the doctor’s house,” Moses replied. “Doctor’s got a room there.”
I remembered there was one black doctor in Overton, remembered hearing my mother speak fretfully of the risky treatment blacks received because there were no real medical facilities for them.
“I’d like to see him,” I said.
I saw Moses glance at Toby, saw Toby look away, saw him begin to gnaw subconsciously on his lower lip. For Toby it was sign language, a speech of worry.
“They not letting nobody in but his mama,” Moses said quietly, yet firmly.
“We won’t be bothering them,” Toby offered. “You just tell them we asked about them, tell them we’ll be praying for them.”
Again, Moses nodded.
“You tell Littlejohn that Brer Turtle is thinking about him,” I said.
Moses’ face furrowed.
“It’s a story I told him,” I added. “A long time ago, when he was no more than four or five.”
“Yes sir,” Moses acknowledged, not asking about the story.
Toby wanted to take the shortcut from Milltown to our home in Crossover, but I needed gasoline for Jack’s Volkswagen and told him I would stop at Earl Cartwright
’s service station.
A dark look settled into his face. He said, “I wouldn’t do that, Cole.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“There’s some hard feelings in town,” he replied. “I wouldn’t call you the most popular man in Georgia right now.”
“Well, damn it, that’s nonsense,” I said indignantly. “I need gas. When I go back today, I plan to take the cut-through over to 78. If I don’t get it now, I’ll have to drive back this way later.”
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “I’ll follow you there.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I insisted. “Go on home.”
“Look, Cole, you’ve been away from here for a few years,” he said in a low, even voice. “You forgot what it’s like. You also forgot that I’m your big brother and not your goddamn servant, and I suspect you forgot that I can snap you like a twig, so either you do this my way or you can push that thing back to Atlanta.”
His tone took me by surprise, yet it also warmed me. Toby had always protected me; he was doing it again.
“All right,” I said meekly.
I did not know I would need his presence as much as I did.
At the service station, a group of men huddled at the grease rack, talking. They turned their attention to me when I got out of Jack’s Volkswagen at the gas pumps.
From the gathering, I heard, “Well, damn. Look who’s here.”
Another voice said, “He got a colored girl with him?”
Someone laughed.
The men began to drift toward me. One of them was Hugh Cooper, who had caught the touchdown pass to win one of our football games. He had gained weight and had added a hardness to his face.
“What you doing over here?” Hugh asked.
“Just visiting,” I told him.
I saw Toby open the door of his truck and step outside the cab.
“I just been reading about you,” Hugh said, holding up a copy of the Overton Weekly Press. The photograph of me cradling Etta Hemsley was like a billboard over the front page.
“Tell me something, Cole,” Hugh added in a brave voice—the kind men use in the company of other men. “This your girlfriend? Word I hear is, you was dating her. That right?”
