The Promise of Jesse Woods

by Chris Fabry

  Something inside took over. Though I was scared of Gentry, I was emboldened by new friends. I could never win a fistfight with him, but I could use words.

  “I’ve been taught that people who call others names are the ones who have the worst arguments.”

  Gentry squinted at me like I was a cootie. “What did you say?”

  “He didn’t stutter,” Jesse said.

  “If you can’t win an argument, you attack people with names. You call a person coon or skank or trash. That means the bully doesn’t have the mental acuity to have real dialogue.”

  Gentry balled one hand into a fist, the other holding the rind.

  “He said you don’t have the brains to really fight,” Dickie said. “All you got is . . .”

  “Epithets,” I said. “It’s an adjective used for people, usually to put them down. But sometimes the epithets turn into nouns when people accept them.”

  Jesse squashed her paper bag. “You know what a noun is, don’t you, Gentry? Trash is a noun, ain’t it, Matt?”

  “Absolutely. Person, place, or thing.”

  “You three are crazy,” Gentry said, tossing the rind at Dickie. Dickie blocked it with his foot and let it fall harmlessly.

  Gentry pointed a finger at me. “My daddy’s going to hear about this. Which means your daddy is going to tan your hide.”

  “Is tan a verb?” Jesse said.

  “It can be a verb or a noun,” I said. “Tan your hide means to hit a person hard enough to change the color of their skin. But a farmer gets a tan in the summer, and that’s a noun.”

  “You have to go easy on him, Matt,” Jesse said. “He was held back so many times they gave him a permanent desk in second grade.”

  “Yeah,” Dickie said. “He got out of the spelling bee on the word cat.”

  “Two years in a row,” Jesse said.

  “You think you’re funny,” Gentry said to Jesse. “You’re not going to be laughing when my dad gets through with that sorry farm of yours.”

  “What’s my farm got to do with the price of watermelon in China?” Jesse said, and Dickie and I both laughed.

  Gentry walked away and I had a sick feeling mixed with a feeling of victory.

  “You had enough?” Jesse said to Dickie.

  “I’d like some watermelon, but I think we’ve overstayed our welcome. By about a half hour.”

  Daisy wanted to take her bag with her and Jesse didn’t argue. I took the rind and the smashed bags of my friends and watched them ride away. When I turned from tossing the trash in a fifty-gallon drum, Mr. Blackwood and Gentry were both watching me.

  JUNE 1972

  My father came into my room Sunday night after the picnic. My nose was swollen and my eyes puffy.

  “Rough day at church today,” he said.

  “Yeah. There’s some mean kids there.”

  “I noticed. I thought coming back here would take the ugliness away.”

  “Ugly happens all over, I guess.”

  He nodded. “Matt, about Jesse and Dickie.”

  I sensed something coming and sat up. There was a shadow behind him at the door. “What about them?”

  “It’s important to get off on the right foot. To choose your friends wisely. I’m not sure those two are the best.”

  “Did Old Man Blackwood say something to you?”

  “Don’t call him that. Basil is an elder and deserves our respect.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This has nothing to do with him. This is about you.”

  “I think I can be a good influence.”

  “Say again?”

  “Jesse’s not a Christian. At least, she says she’s not. And Dickie is like . . . one of the least of these, you know?”

  He squinted at me.

  “You’re always talking about serving the least of these.”

  “There’s a difference between serving and following. You can lead people toward the truth or you can go over the cliff.” He adjusted his glasses. “Mr. Blake told me what happened in his store.”

  This was one of the drawbacks of a small town. And I was quickly learning why they said a pastor’s family lived in a fishbowl.

  “They promised never to steal again,” I said. “Jesse spit on it and crossed her heart and hoped to die. You can’t get more repentant than that.”

  My father stifled a smile and sat on my bed. There were lines in his face, here in the darkness of my room, that I had never noticed. “Son, there are things you don’t know about Jesse and her family. Things about their history.”

  “I don’t care about history. I’m looking for friends and I found a couple of good ones.”

  My mother finally walked inside. “Matt, honey, we need to draw some lines. Set boundaries. You’re not going to be spending the whole summer with those two traipsing all over the hills and stealing candy.”

  “I just told Dad they promised not to do that again.”

  “I won’t have you spending your own money on bikes for the indigent population.”

  I stared at her, wondering how in the world she could have known about Jesse’s bike. “She’s going to pay me back as soon as her mother gets her check.”

  My dad studied the floor. My mom crossed her arms. Both were disappointed I was fighting. Finally she spoke.

  “I’m glad you’re adjusting. I know this is not easy, since we’re not in the new house and living at your grandmother’s is not ideal. But your father and I think it’s better to structure your time so you don’t have as much—”

  “So I don’t have free time to spend with Dickie and Jesse,” I said. I grabbed my nose for sympathy.

  “We’ve found a piano teacher,” my father said.

  “A piano teacher?” I said, incredulous. “A piano teacher is going to fix this?”

  “You said you didn’t want me to teach you and I understand that,” my mother said, staring daggers. At night, when she got tired, the fangs came out. “And we agreed we would find you a different teacher.”

  “Mrs. McCormick has taught music for years,” my father said. “She’s glad to take you on.”

  A trickle ran down one nostril. I asked for something to catch the blood and my father brought a toilet paper roll from the bathroom. I unwrapped a few thin pieces and held the wad against my nose.

  “Mom, it’s summer. I’m supposed to have fun.”

  “Life’s not all fun and games,” she said quickly as if trying to comfort herself with the truth.

  My dad turned to her. “This is a big adjustment. I think the piano lessons on Wednesdays and the church commitments will be enough structure, along with chores.”

  “And what about when his friends come knocking? You know they’ll come, Cal. First thing in the morning. Late at night. Those kids are loose laundry.”

  “I can tell them not to come too early,” I said. “They’ll listen.”

  My mom shook her head.

  “Why were you so nice to them, then?” I said. “Was that an act? Why did you give them food and tell them to come to the church picnic if you don’t like them?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like them. I feel sorry for them. I can only imagine what those girls have been through. It breaks my heart to see how they live. I know you don’t understand but—”

  “I do understand. You don’t want me associating with a coon and a skank.”

  My mother’s mouth dropped. “Matt Plumley.”

  “That’s what the church kids called them. Are those the kids you want to influence me?”

  “I will not have you talk that way,” my mother said.

  My father held up a hand. “That’s enough. I see Matt’s point. Sometimes Christians are hard to get along with. And I’m sorry you had to hear those ugly words.” He rubbed his hands on his trousers, looking over at my baseball glove on the bed. I thought I could tell who he was thinking about.

  “Let’s just take this a day at a time,” he said to my mother.

  “Does that mean I
can still be friends with them?”

  He stood and glanced at my nightstand. I had been reading a dog-eared copy of The Old Man and the Sea that I found on a bookshelf in the living room. “It means you will get on your bike tomorrow and ride to the library. I want you to keep up on your reading. If Dickie and Jesse want to tag along, fine. And I want you reading something good.”

  “They can show me where it is,” I said, a little hope in my voice.

  He nodded and my mother touched my foot and slipped out of the room. My father tousled my hair and forced a smile. Then he leaned down. “I heard the Pirates beat the Dodgers. Won the series. Which is good for the Reds.”

  I couldn’t hold back a smile. “Can we still see them when they come to Cincinnati?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I don’t like to read,” Jesse said as we rode to the library the next day. “I never was no good at it.”

  “You never were good at it,” I said.

  “How would you know?” she said.

  “He’s correcting your grammar,” Dickie said.

  “He don’t know my grammar. She died a long time ago.”

  Dickie laughed.

  “Fine, I never were good at it.”

  Dickie laughed harder.

  “Why do you want to go to the lie-berry?” Jesse said. “That’s not what summers are for.”

  “Library,” I said.

  “You gonna correct everything I say? Fine, library. Satisfied?”

  I smiled. “If you learn to read, you can do anything. Books will take you places you’ve never been. I was just reading Hemingway about an old man taken out to sea by a big fish. And there’s baseball in it. He talks about the Yankees and DiMaggio.”

  “Who in the world is DiMaggio?” Jesse said.

  “Does it talk about Jackie Robinson?” Dickie said.

  “I don’t think so, but I can find you another book that does.”

  “I’d rather go fishin’ than to the library,” Jesse said, accentuating the last word’s correct pronunciation again. “At least you can eat if you catch something.”

  “Fine, we’ll go fishing after we get some books.”

  One of the first things my mother had done after settling in was get library cards. I carried mine in my wallet as one of my means of identification. That and the NRA membership my uncle Willy had given me that came with a magazine I received each month.

  The Dogwood library was a sorry little building with flooring much like Blake’s store. I would have missed it entirely if Jesse and Dickie hadn’t pointed it out. It was tucked in between the florist and the funeral home.

  Dickie laughed when he noticed the first r was missing from the word painted on the front door. “Maybe that’s why Jesse said it wrong.”

  Inside, the musty smell of old books and the quiet made something come alive in me. Ceiling fans blew knowledge and dust bunnies around the room. Just the aroma of those pages and the promise of words showed there was hope for even this tiny town.

  “With this library card, we can go anywhere we want. On the sea with Moby Dick, to a deserted island with Robinson Crusoe—”

  “Can it take us to Gilligan’s island?” Jesse said.

  The librarian behind the counter held an arthritic finger to her lips. “Shh. This is a library.”

  Jesse whispered to me, “It is? I thought it was the A&P.”

  Dickie chuckled and I turned red trying to hold in the laughter, but the more you try to hold something in, the harder it gets. I ducked into the stacks and some gas escaped with a noise that reverberated off the walls and I rushed to the bathroom. Jesse and Dickie never let me live that down. All they had to do was threaten to tell about making noise in the library to shut me up.

  I returned to find them and the librarian in the fiction section. She was a thin, older woman whose earrings looked bigger than she was. Her hair was as white as flour and she wore a shawl that covered spindly arms. That she was cold in the heat and humidity of June made me feel sorry for her.

  “I will not have you disturbing library patrons,” she said, her voice deep and clipped. Her dentures clicked against her gums and her lower jaw jutted. She wore glasses secured to her head by a thin chain around her neck.

  Jesse looked around and said politely, “We’re the only ones here, ma’am.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the woman whispered, narrowing her gaze. “You enter a library quietly, you stay quiet, and you leave quietly. This is a sacred place of learning. A library is a privilege, not a right.”

  “We’re sorry, ma’am,” Dickie said. “We only learned how to pronounce the name of the building this morning.”

  She glared at him, then turned to me. “I suggest you get what you need and leave. What were you looking for?”

  “I’m looking for something good to read to my friends,” I said.

  “Read to us?” Jesse said.

  “Can you recommend something?” I said to the librarian.

  She scowled and looked at the stacks. She paused around the L/M section and turned back to me. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be fourteen in a couple of weeks,” I said.

  “Your birthday’s coming up?” Dickie said. “We’ll have to have a party.”

  “We’ll have to invite all the kids from church to play basketball and call people names,” Jesse said. “We can play pin the tail on the preacher’s kid.”

  The woman turned back to the shelf and pulled a book down. “Have you ever read this?” She held out a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

  “I seen the last part of that movie on TV,” Jesse said. “The little girl dresses up like a ham, doesn’t she?”

  “I saw the movie too, but I’ve never read the book,” I said.

  The librarian looked at me, then at Dickie, weighing something in her gaze. “I think you’re probably ready. Them, too.”

  She handed it to me and I opened the cover and saw the names of those who had checked it out before me. It was an original copy published in 1960.

  “So we’ve got a hunting book now,” Dickie said. “All we need is one about fishing and we’re good.”

  “It’s not a hunting book,” I said. “It’s fiction.”

  “What’s it about?” Dickie said.

  “It’s about the South and a man who’s accused of something . . .” I didn’t want to give away too much. “You’ll see.”

  I took the book to the front desk, where the librarian took out a card. I signed my name and handed it back, along with my library card. She stamped the book with the due date and did the same next to my name on the card before filing it in a drawer.

  The woman looked at my friends. “Do you two have library cards?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Everyone should have one. This is a gateway to learning. Take advantage of this.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jesse said.

  “You got any books in here about the Mothman?” Dickie said. “Or UFOs?”

  She nodded. “Come back after you finish that and I’ll find some.”

  The three of us walked out with our treasure. Jesse let me put the book in her basket as we rode to Dickie’s house and dug for worms by the shady side of the yard. They lifted rotting wood and flat rocks until we had enough. Dickie complained that we didn’t have night crawlers and that we wouldn’t catch any bass with small worms, and I had to admit I didn’t know what a night crawler was.

  “So you don’t know everything?” Jesse said.

  “There’s a lot I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you can check out To Catch a Night Crawler next week,” Dickie said.

  “I don’t mind being read to, but I don’t like to read,” Jesse said. “Makes me nervous.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I remember in first grade reading about Dick and Jane and Spot and it never made no sense. They did a lot of running around but they never got anywhere. And then in second grade they put you in a reading group and you had to go
around and read a paragraph and I always tripped on the words.”

  “The worst was the reading machine,” Dickie said. “Remember when Mrs. Edwards got that thing out?”

  “My lands, I wanted to throw up every day of second grade.”

  I asked what a reading machine was and the two were surprised I had never experienced it.

  “It was like an overhead projector,” Dickie said, “but it only showed a few words in the sentence and you had to keep up with it. It gauged how fast we could read, but it just made me dizzy.”

  “‘Slow it down, Mrs. Edwards!’” Jesse said. “That’s what everybody said, but she’d put the thing in high gear.”

  Jesse and Dickie felt about reading the way I felt about fishing. I had gone with my uncle Willy to the lake one vacation, but I didn’t bait my own hook. Catching fish was nerve-racking because I was afraid the fish might bite me—and the smell turned my stomach.

  We struck out for the reservoir and on our way passed a farmer pulling a wagon of what looked like black dirt. Jesse waved at the man like she knew him, but Dickie stopped.

  “Hey, mister, whatcha got in the wagon?”

  “Cow manure,” the man said, spitting a brown stream at the other side of the road.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Dickie said.

  “Take it home and put it on my strawberries.”

  The man rode on and Dickie turned to me, the smell of the manure lingering. “I like whipped cream on mine. But to each his own.”

  Jesse slapped her leg and laughed hard and so did I.

  When we reached the reservoir, I watched Jesse and Dickie in fascination as they baited their hooks and dropped their lines in the water. They each used a long, thin bamboo pole with nylon string tied to the end and a bobber in the middle of the line. They adjusted the bobbers and sat on the bank.

  “You fishing or spectating?” Jesse said.

  “I think I’ll watch,” I said, grabbing the book.

  “No way. You have to fish.”

  “I think he’s scared the worms will bite him,” Dickie said.

  Jesse stuck her hand in the Maxwell House can and pulled out a juicy worm. She stuck the hook into one end of the slimy creature and worked it up on the hook so that it was secure. The end of the worm wriggled.