Call Me by My Name

by John Ed Bradley

  “Let them,” she said quietly.

  “Let them? You want that?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and faced me now. “Let them.”

  The next day Pops said he wanted to see what they were up to at the park. I got in the truck and went with him.

  He parked on Market Street in front of the pool house, and we walked past it and the pool and entered the woods that ran down to the bayou. At the bayou we left our trail and started for the barbecue pits. We moved from tree to tree, using the trunks for cover. I experienced a bump of déjà vu and recalled tracking prey with Pops on hunts in the Atchafalaya Basin. We didn’t get close enough for them to see us, and what we saw were two silent figures sitting across from each other at a picnic table with schoolbooks open between them. A Coleman lantern—ours probably—stood at the middle of the table and burned a bright white light.

  “They’re studying,” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Innocent enough,” I said.

  Even in the darkness I could see the color come up in his face. I followed him back to the Cameo along the same route, and once we got inside the cab he said, “That’s your sister down there, Rodney,” as if to challenge me to do something about it.

  On the drive home I thought about those words—“That’s your sister down there, Rodney.” And I understood that while I had seen Angie and Tater studying for an exam, Pops had seen his daughter out in public with a black guy.

  She always returned home before supper, her lipstick fresh and her hair in place, her clothes in perfect order. She and Tater talked again later before it was time for bed. She called him from the kitchen phone. I once heard her whisper “I do too” into the receiver. But I never heard her tell him she loved him.

  He still came by on Thursdays, and now he added Sunday to the schedule. He was mine the first day and Angie’s the second. Mama had a rule against letting boys in Angie’s room or girls in mine, so they sat in the living room and played records. He never held her hand, never kissed her, never so much as brushed against her. He never stayed late. “Thank you, Mrs. Boulet,” he always said before leaving.

  The more we saw of Tater, the less we saw of Pops. He put in longer hours at the plant, and on his days off he made more hunts and fishing trips. The freezer in the carport couldn’t hold more fish and game, so he went from house to house in the neighborhood, giving it away. “No tomatoes till summer,” he’d say, “but how about some rabbit meat for the winter stew?”

  He found chores to tend to when he was home, most of them unnecessary. One day I returned from practice and found him on the roof brushing silver radiator paint on the vent stacks. “I don’t know how to make him stop,” Mama said.

  But she, too, was allowing work to consume her. Debutante season was only a few months away and she accepted more bal masque commissions than she was capable of finishing. Bolts of fabric stood in the corners of the living room; lace and taffeta covered every surface. If you wanted to watch TV, you had to move the pile of dresses from the top of the Zenith.

  I never heard Mama or Pops say a word to Angie about Tater. And only once did I hear them speak to each other about him. They were talking in their bedroom, and I was listening out in the hall, my ear close to the door. “When will it run its course?” Pops said. “When will it end? I swear I can’t take it anymore.” Sometimes I could see the pain in his eyes when we sat down to supper in the evening. And I saw it when we filed into Queen of Angels on Sunday and claimed our usual seats three rows from the altar. Once at mass Pops wasn’t able to stand with the rest of the congregation and join the line to receive Communion. I would later tell Regina he seemed paralyzed.

  “Are you okay?” Mama asked him on the drive home.

  “No. No, I’m not. Are you okay?”

  And all the while Angie was sitting there in back, her face turned to the window, even though her eyes were closed.

  One evening when she wasn’t home, Pops asked me to help him carry the hi-fi to her room. “I’m sick of hearing it,” he said. In the weeks leading up to this day, Angie had removed the magazine clippings showing Leonard Whiting and replaced them with a large collection of newspaper stories that chronicled the football season, and many included photos of Tater in action. I found only a few that showed me, captured, as usual, in the inglorious throes of blocking for my quarterback. One headline, tacked to the gypsum board over Angie’s headboard, had appeared in the paper earlier this week. TATER ON THE PROWL, it said.

  “Makes him sound like an escaped convict terrorizing the community,” Pops told me. “Gentlemen, lock your doors and load your weapons. And hide your little girls,” he added, with what sounded like a laugh.

  He led me out into the hall and pulled the door closed, then he returned to the living room and got on his knees and started cleaning the floor where the hi-fi had stood. We never talked about much outside of sports in their seasons. He could tell you the Astros’ lineup and batting averages, he knew the team rosters for LSU and the Saints, he could ramble on about sacalait and bull bream. But ask him anything personal and he either became evasive or disarmed your questions with long silences that had you wishing you’d kept your mouth shut.

  “I once knew this colored guy named Carnel Williams,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Carnel Williams. He worked at the ice plant. One night Carnel—” He stopped and waited until I was looking at him. “Do you want to hear my story, Rodney?”

  “Sure, Pops.”

  “Well, Carnel goes out one night to the honky-tonk. He’s got three other colored boys with him, and they get in a head-on crash on the way home. Carnel’s trapped behind the wheel, and they pronounce him dead at the scene. The next day in the paper there’s a headline on the front page: ‘Local Man Killed in Automobile Accident’. It’s a long story describing what happened, and you read all the way down to the end and find out that four Negroes also died. And you understand that, in fact, five people were killed in this wreck—the white man in one car, and in the other Carnel and his friends.” He paused. “My point being, whenever you get to thinking that your old man is prejudiced, and whenever you wonder why I am the way I am, I want you to remember that story. It will give you some perspective.”

  “Why do we not like them, Pops?” I asked.

  “You’re not speaking for me when you make a statement like that.”

  “It wasn’t a statement, it was a question.”

  “Who are we talking about, Rodney? Are we on Carnel and his friends or is it blacks in general now?”

  “Blacks in general. Why don’t we like them? Could you tell me?” He gave no answer, as I knew he would. “I’ve stopped always looking for the differences, Pops.”

  “The blacks never did anything to me.”

  “Then why do you leave the house when Tater comes over? He walks over a mile to get here. He’s always polite and respectful. He leaves early.”

  “What was the question again?”

  “You’ve been leaving the house when he comes over.”

  “Have I?”

  He also left our games before they were finished, disappearing into dark parking lots where he rolled cigarettes and smoked them, staring off at the sky. He wasn’t there when we left the locker room at game’s end, either. A victory gauntlet stretched from the stadium to the bus, but Pops never joined it.

  I didn’t mention these absences now. I felt almost privileged that he’d gone this far with me. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to pick up the husk of a dead cockroach.

  “It’s either an inherited thing or a behavior we learn when we’re kids,” I said. “It’s one or the other. Which one would you say it is?”

  “You’ve lost me, Rodney.”

  “No, I haven’t. The way we automatically feel about them, without giving them a chance first.”

/>   “You’ll need to go get the dictionary. What were my choices again?”

  We moved a chair to the place where the hi-fi had been. I could see his biceps bunch up, then stretch out in bands. He suddenly seemed very old, like a person from another time. He could’ve been a character in a black-and-white movie that played on TV late at night when no one was watching.

  Something in his face changed. His lips bunched up; a twitch came to his chin. He looked down at the handkerchief and seemed to be trying to decide what to do with it. “Everything is moving so fast,” he said. “I try to keep up, I really do. But I feel like it’s run me by. I stand there saying, ‘Wait, wait, wait for me,’ but nobody does.”

  “What kind of people are we, Pops?”

  “I don’t want your sister to throw her life away, Rodney.”

  “But it’s Tater, Pops.”

  He’d fought with the 23rd Infantry Regiment at Heartbreak Ridge. On the top shelf of the closet he shared with Mama there was a wooden box filled with medals. But here he was now with tears running down his face and his son watching.

  The cheerleaders continued to decorate the gym anew each week, and on Thursday they left messages in our lockers, wishing us well in the upcoming game. The messages were written out in crayon on slips of colored construction paper, rolled up tight and tied off with ribbons and stuffed into the ventilation holes in the cubbies at the top of our lockers. After Terrebone, Regina broke from the group’s tradition of anonymity and signed her notes to me with a monogram.

  After Sulphur, she drew hearts instead of stars and glued sprinkles on the hearts and shot arrows through them. She also added perfume. As a matter of fact, she added so much that my teammates ribbed me mercilessly about it, no one more than Rubin, who held Regina’s scented note to his face, inhaled deeply, then staggered backward across the locker room, as if drunk and angling for a place to fall.

  “I’ll get you for that,” I said to him.

  Still stumbling, he came over and kissed the top of my head.

  Not counting the games, the Friday pep rallies were my favorite part of the week. When we walked out on the gym floor as a team, the crowd hopped to its feet and greeted us with so much noise you thought the Plexiglas basketball goals were going to shatter. All the guys combed their hair, wore cologne, and kept their jerseys tucked into their jeans. Everybody was loose and goofing off the way it should be the day before the biggest game of your life. The principal and Coach Cadet gave speeches, then the senior team leaders got up and said a few words. Or most of them did. Driven to panic by the prospect of having to speak to a large group, I’d succeeded in avoiding that chore until our semifinal game with Brother Martin. Even though I’d told Coach Cadet I wouldn’t do it, he introduced me, anyway, after announcing that Tater and I had been named consensus all-Americans.

  The crowd was making such a racket that Coach couldn’t hear me wailing in protest. Then Angie and another girl ran out and pulled me from my seat, and next thing you know I was standing on the little stage, looking out at bedlam. A bit of sickness seized my stomach, but I contained it somehow. And I managed to open my mouth and force words out, my impromptu remarks astonishing no one more than myself.

  “We have God on our side,” I announced like a preacher before his flock. But even as the spectators responded with a roar, I stood there wondering: Why would God choose us? Why would He favor a public school team over one from a Catholic school? Would He really prefer a crummy town like ours to a big, beautiful city like New Orleans?

  “And with God on our side,” I went on, “we can’t lose. Remember I told you that.” I pointed a finger at the ceiling as I walked back to my seat.

  Dumbass.

  Tater came next. He stepped up to the mike and had to wait for the cheering to subside and the crowd to sit down. His jersey was baggy on him, the number 11 cut short by the fat black belt at his waistline. He looked out not only at an audience of his schoolmates but of their parents and siblings, as well as supporters from the town and alumni swept up by our success. He cleared his throat.

  “First, I’d like to recognize my offensive line,” he said. “I can assure you I’d be nothing without the Bigfeet—Rodney and the rest of them guys. Second, I’d like to make a promise. This school has never won state as far as I know, but I promise you today that my teammates and I are going to change that. Nothing can stop us—nothing, you hear me? Come see us if you’re not doing anything Friday night.”

  I’d heard more impassioned speeches from Tater before but none as effective. He hadn’t guaranteed the title but promised it, and that was more like him, and exactly what they wanted—unfailing confidence with a touch of humility. A wild eruption followed, and up came the band with “Hold That Tiger.” The rest of the team had been sitting in folding chairs on the gym floor, but now everybody rushed to their feet and charged him. And so did the crowd, spilling out to where he stood under hanging lamps decorated with orange-and-black streamers. Some of the guys hoisted Tater onto their shoulders and paraded him around, as if we’d already won. This didn’t go over well with Coach Cadet, who commandeered the mike and announced that the pep rally was over and for everybody to report back to class.

  “Don’t hurt him, for God’s sake,” he said. “We need him. Please. Please. We need him.”

  We won by ten points, which put us in the championship game the next week. Afterward, Regina and I danced a slow one on the patio at the Little Chef. The metal overhang was strung with multicolored Christmas lights, and they warmed the top of my head as we moved across the floor. The weather had turned cold, and I removed my letterman jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The coat swallowed her up and reached down past her knees. And when the party ended, she left with it. In our world a girl wore your letterman jacket only when the two of you were a couple.

  “Does that make it official?” Tater asked as we stood next to each other in the lot and watched Regina drive away.

  I was too overcome to reply.

  The next night I drove her to my grandparents’ place and parked under the trees by the bayou in back. Regina was the first girl I ever kissed, and I understood at last what the fuss was all about. When we weren’t making out, I told her stories about No Face, Bonepicker, and the Loup Garou, all local legends whose terrifying mythologies succeeded in driving Regina closer to me. The night was alive with ghosts, but we’d arrived at a place where neither of us was scared.

  We kissed each other with such fierce and hungry abandon that the flesh around my mouth became desensitized. I was so happy that I wished the same happiness for my sister, and I was ashamed for standing in her way.

  “When you’re young,” Regina told me, pushing my hand away, “there should always be something left to look forward to.”

  “When you’re young,” I repeated, certain that we would be so forever.

  Two days before our game with Byrd, they met for the last time in the park. It was cold and the wind blew from the north, trapping leaves against the fences of the tennis courts and baseball fields and chasing off the bayou’s usual odor of sludge and waste. They rummaged for kindling and downed branches and carried them to the open pavilion and made a fire in the massive pit. They dragged a picnic table close to the blaze and sat next to each other on top with their feet resting on the bench seat. Neither was wearing gloves. Tater opened his jacket and she put her arms inside and warmed her hands.

  They were sitting together this way when an old car pulled up. Four young men stepped out, and then a fifth emerged from behind the wheel. It was Curly Trussell, who’d enrolled at one of the new all-white academies in town after his expulsion from our school. The blowing wind and crackling fire kept Angie from hearing Curly and his friends until they were “right on top of us,” she told me later.

  Dressed alike in school uniforms, they looked more like a debate team than a pack of hoodlums. Curly was holding a wo
oden club about eighteen inches long with rings carved on the handle. He walked up to within a few feet of where Angie and Tater were sitting and slammed the club against one of the wooden columns holding up the pavilion. The sound was like a shotgun blast, and it so frightened Tater and Angie that they jumped from their table and stumbled out into the grass. The boys followed them, and Curly slapped the column a second time.

  “Who told you you could burn a fire in our pit?” the smallest of them said. “That’s my pit.” He pointed.

  Angie reached for Tater’s hand, and this brought Curly closer. He was standing in front of them now, and the four others formed a circle around them. Curly kept tapping the club against the palm of his hand.

  “My pit, my park,” the boy said. “What makes you think you’re good enough? Because you play football? Oh, wow. He plays football.”

  Tater didn’t respond, and Curly pointed the club at him. “How about it, my brother? Are you good enough?”

  “Good enough for what?”

  “For me to beat your brains in,” Curly said. “Let’s start there.” He jabbed the air between them. “Good enough for Angie Boulet, then?” he said. “You good enough for some of that, my brother?”

  “Yeah,” Tater answered. “I think I am. But I’m prejudiced.”

  “He’s prejudiced,” Curly said to his friends. “Y’all hear that? The brother’s prejudiced. How does that work?” He laughed even as his expression turned cold.

  He seemed to be trying to decide which one of them to strike first, Angie or Tater.

  It was at this moment that Angie cocked her head back and spat at Curly, catching him in the right eye. He lunged at her with the club raised, and she went at him, leading with her head and butting him in the middle of his face. Blood shot from his nose and mouth as he dropped to the ground and lay screaming at the feet of his friends. Angie picked up the club and offered it to the other ones—“Take it, come on”—but they backed away. She took a step toward the smallest kid, pretending to want him next, and he took off running for the car. The others carried Curly away.