The Year the Lights Came On

by Terry Kay

  *

  I had almost talked of the REA to Megan. Our Side had changed and she knew it. Everyone knew it. The pressure was building.

  On Saturday, a man in a Jeep appeared at our home and he and our father walked away, crossing a field to a pine tree stand. Wesley and I watched from a distance. Occasionally the man would stop and gesture toward Emery or Goldmine and I knew from the mime of his arm-waving that he was saying something important. I also thought I had seen the man before and I asked Wesley about him: “Is that the same man who was talking to Daddy about the REA?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Wesley.

  “What’re they talkin’ about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’d you think they’re talkin’ about?” I said.

  “How am I supposed to know?” Wesley said irritably. “If he’s the REA man, I guess they’re talking about where the lines are going. I don’t know.”

  Of course, I thought. There would have to be lines and electric light poles and transformers and fuse boxes and meters. I closed my eyes and heard the deep bass of men at work, saw the statue-like lean of their bodies tilting backward as they worked against safety belts high up on black, creosoted pine poles. I saw their hard hats and equipment holsters and spike boots.

  I saw Thomas. Smiling, swinging a rope across his shoulder, jabbing a spike into a pole, and climbing. Thomas. Soundless Thomas.

  I opened my eyes and looked for Wesley. He was sitting against a pine. His eyes were half closed and he was holding a braided pine needle, slowly twirling it in his fingers. Sometimes I confused Wesley and Thomas. They were part of my mood and belonging, yet they seemed removed—Thomas by death and Wesley by ordination. It was bewildering. I was inseparably fused with two people, yet they were somehow removed from my offer—my longing—to know them wholly.

  “I saw that man pointin’ over to where Freeman lives, Wesley,” I said. “You think Freeman and them will get electricity?”

  Wesley opened his eyes and looked in the direction of Freeman’s home across the swamp. “I doubt it,” he answered. “They live too far off the line.”

  Freeman lived with his parents in a shotgun house that was wrapped like gauze in tarpaper. The house had been built for a WPA crew during the thirties. After the crew left, finished with its work of draining Black Pool Swamp, Odell Boyd moved his wife and young son into the house and, in the following years, he had piddled with improvements and failed to improve anything. Odell Boyd worked the sawmills and sometimes made illegal whiskey by moonlight, but there was nothing mean about him. My mother said luck ran backward for him and that we could learn a lot by paying attention to the hard times other people had to live with. She was right. I was always learning something from Freeman—even if it meant I had to be corrected after most of the lessons.

  “It just don’t seem right,” I protested. “Freeman and them ought to get electricity like everybody else.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Wesley. “Maybe they’ll move up to where the Grooms used to live.”

  “I wish they would,” I said.

  *

  We did not question our father about the man, or the REA. We had been taught to honor the adult privilege of silence. Be patient, we were told; be patient and you’ll know soon enough. I think I understood even then that patience was a gift of the Southerner—patience and an instinct for the Right Time. That was what Wesley had said to us: “Be patient, and the time for springing the REA will come; don’t worry, it’ll happen.”

  Days eased into a bubble of other days. We were patient. We waited. But we also lived with the fear that someone from the Highway 17 Gang would begin to smart-mouth about the REA. And that would settle it. Too late. Our play for the Right Time would have been lost. We complained to Wesley, but Wesley pleaded with us to wait, to be patient—more patient. I thought he was probably testing us, teaching us one of the values of life that was natural with him. He was always doing that. Wesley was born to teach.

  *

  But still we waited.

  Our celebration turned to sulking, our joy peaked and paled into fatigue. Our nerves were frayed. But nothing was as bothersome as the new energy of the Highway 17 Gang in tormenting us. It was more than any of us could tolerate and it became difficult for Wesley to control our tempers.

  “Confound it,” Freeman declared one afternoon. “I’m not gonna take much more of all that smart-aleck talk I been gettin’, Wes. I’m not now, and you better know it.”

  “Freeman, it’s not gonna hurt you to wait, is it?” replied Wesley.

  “It’s not gonna hurt me? Lordamercy, Wesley. It’s killin’ me. You got no feelings, you know that? That’s your trouble, boy.”

  “The time will come, Freeman. I promise it.”

  *

  The time came two days later, on a Friday. It came on a day screaming from the splendor of its blueness, burning with a fever of early summer oozing from the spring ground, and suffocating us with the smell of crushed grass.

  On that day, Wesley ended our waiting.

  On that day, Wesley caused a riot.

  *

  It happened at midmorning recess. Shirley Weems was a thin, pale girl who was Wesley’s age but two years behind him in her class in school. One of my older sisters, Amy, who had studied nursing, said Shirley and her brothers and sisters were suffering from a lack of vitamins, or something. They were undernourished and their bodies could not react as quickly as they should. “Never, never, never, never make fun of them,” Amy had warned us. “They’re the poorest people in Emery.” And they were. Poverty had left the Weems family totally, completely defeated. Shirley wore washed-out gingham dresses, colorless and dead. Scabs were always on her arms and mouth. Once, the county nurse had found lice in her hair and Shirley was herded out from the rest of us standing at attention in the auditorium, and her head was powdered until it turned white. She stood very still in one corner of the auditorium and tears rolled off her empty face. Dupree had started giggling and pointing and Freeman gave him a bullet shot in the kidneys. Dupree complained loudly, accusing Freeman of “picking” on him. Wesley quickly embraced the argument, saying it was Shirley, not Dupree, who was being picked on. Mrs. Simmons agreed with Wesley; she led Shirley out of the auditorium, away from the careless indignity of being an example to those who did not exercise proper hygiene. After that, Wesley was teased miserably by the Highway 17 Gang about being Shirley’s boyfriend, but it never bothered him. He never replied to any of the taunting, and occasionally he would sneak something out of the lunchroom and give it to Lynn to give to Shirley.

  The Weems children did not eat in the lunchroom.

  The Weems children did not eat lunch.

  *

  And on this screaming, burning, spring-summer day, Shirley Weems was standing alone at recess when Dupree and Sonny and five or six others began to circle her and sing:

  “Shirley, Shirley, I been thinkin’,

  What would keep your feet from stinkin’…

  A barrel of water and a cake of soap,

  Put ’em in and let ’em soak…”

  Walter Weems, who was eight and a first-grader for the second year, rushed up to Dupree and kicked him. “Quit it,” he yelled, his voice a shrill bird’s cry. “Leave Sister alone. Leave her alone.”

  Dupree whirled and slapped Walter viciously across the face. Walter fell and rolled over the hard clay of the outside basketball court.

  “Damn you, Dupree Hixon!”

  It was Wesley, from in front of the canning plant. His voice was guttural, an animal’s voice, an explosion of agony. Freeman knew what would happen; if Wesley resorted to foul language, it always ended in a fight. Freeman reached for him, but Wesley ripped away and bolted the distance separating him from Dupree. Sonny stepped in front of Dupree, cutting off Wesley’s rush.

  “What’d you think you’re gonna do, hick?” snapped Sonny.

  Wesley cried from deep in his chest, caught the larger Sonny by his
shirt, and lifted him off the ground. He threw Sonny to one side and hit Dupree three times before Dupree could lift his arms. Wayne Heath circled quickly behind Wesley and kicked him in the lower back and Wesley fell forward as someone else hit him on the ear.

  I tackled Wayne and turned him, grabbed his hair, and bit into his shoulder. Wayne jerked and fell, tossing his head wildly. I was on him like a tick. He bucked and rolled, and I bit deeper.

  “Bite a plug out,” Freeman yelled gleefully, as he threw bodies aside and pulled Wesley away from the pounding. I could tell by his voice that Freeman was proud of my fighting style.

  “Let me alone,” Wesley commanded and Freeman dropped him.

  Freeman laughed. “Hey, boy. We got us a fight on our hands.” He hit Ted Prichard and Ted fell in a lump. “Where’s R. J.?”

  Wayne clubbed at me with his fist and I wrapped my legs around him and started squeezing. His eyes crossed and he began to slobber. I heard someone yell, “Colin. Sonny’s got a rock.” I looked up and saw Sonny standing above me, saw the hammer swing of his arm, and I felt something cracking against the back of my neck. I released Wayne. The sky turned black, then scarlet, then silver. I could feel blood running down my neck. I could hear Freeman directing R. J. and Otis and Paul, like a general: “Hit ’em! Hit ’em!” And then I heard Wesley’s pained cry: “That’s my little brother…”

  The sky turned black again and I saw someone running inside the corridor of a long, blinding-white building. The muscles of my legs tried to lift me, but couldn’t. I fell forward on my hands and the running figure in the corridor of the long, blinding-white building flashed into focus: I was that running figure and I wondered where I was and why I was there. The blackness rolled into my head like a tornado. There was a thunderous, deafening sound, then no sound, then a frightening, loud, sustained whistle. I could feel the blood circling around my shoulder, and then the familiar touch of a familiar someone, and I knew Lynn was on her knees, cradling me, rocking me in her arms, and crying. “He’s gonna die. He’s gonna die,” she sobbed, swabbing at the stream of blood with her dress.

  “Shut up, Lynn,” I whispered through dry lips.

  The terrible blackness returned and, for the first time in my life, the thought of dying was real—clouds enveloping me, lifting me effortlessly. Yes, I thought, that’s what The Anderson Independent meant when it printed that Death Takes So-and-So in its obituary section.

  “He’s gonna die,” Lynn repeated. I believed her. Lynn was amazingly perceptive.

  “He better get up and do some fightin’,” Freeman ordered, dropping Seymour Hillary with a knee to the stomach. Freeman did not know I had been hit with a rock, and for some ridiculous reason I wanted to laugh. I loved Freeman Boyd. He was incredible.

  “He’s been busted with a rock, Freeman,” Lynn screamed angrily.

  Freeman turned quickly toward me. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, and turned back to the fight.

  I rolled on my shoulder in Lynn’s arms and looked through a blood-blur screen. It seemed every boy in school was fighting, grade one to grade nine. Otis was pounding on Edward Roach; Freeman was rearranging Dupree’s facial features; R. J. and Jack had five younger kids backed up; Alvin Bond, the tallest boy in school, was slapping at anyone in reach; and Wesley was straddling Sonny on the ground. He had Sonny’s arms pinned and was spitting in his face.

  I had never seen such a fight. It was fantastic. Beautiful. Kicking and swinging and pinching and tackling. A haze of red dust was ankle-deep, rising like early morning fog over a river of years of antagonism and frustration. The fight we’d waited for, prayed over, talked about, was finally taking place and I could not join the battle.

  Suddenly, teachers appeared. They were everywhere, pulling, pushing, threatening, demanding—until the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side was separated and glaring, group to group, from across ten feet of clay basketball court that somehow perfectly symbolized the difference we had known: they were in the freethrow lane and we were out of bounds.

  Wade Simmons was away for the day, attending a meeting in Athens, and the only male teacher present was Dewitt Hollister. He was a cranky old man who thrilled at the thought of administering punishment. It was a sickness with him. He had a ready temper and because he dealt with children he had no fear of challenge. Now, in the aftermath of a riot, his face was blotched in anger and he waved his thin leather belt around like Al “Lash” LaRue in a saloon.

  “Now, who started this?” Hollister demanded.

  “Wesley Wynn,” shouted Dupree. “Wesley Wynn started it, by granny.”

  Freeman took one step toward Dupree and Hollister lashed him with his belt. Freeman growled and turned to face the second blow. He was in a nasty, fighting mood.

  Wesley pulled away from Old Lady Blackwall’s hammerlock. He caught Freeman by the arm and jerked him away from Hollister. Both groups froze. Hollister raised his belt. Wesley did not move. Hollister dropped his arm. Hitting Freeman or me or anyone else was one thing; hitting Wesley was another matter. Wesley defied such punishment.

  “This fight started,” Wesley said in a measured, perfectly calm voice, “because Dupree and them was makin’ fun of Shirley Weems. I know that’s wrong and you know it’s wrong. But Shirley’s put up with that since she’s been in school and she’d of taken it again today. We would’ve watched it happen again…” Wesley looked at Shirley and apologized with his eyes. She dropped her head and stood perfectly still.

  “That’s not so,” Dupree interrupted. “She’s his girl.”

  “Dupree, you keep quiet,” Mrs. Simmons ordered, and even Hollister recognized her presence.

  “Well, like I said, it would’ve been just like before,” continued Wesley, “but that little brother of hers, well, he’s not learned what it’s like to be pushed around all the time, and when Dupree slapped him to the ground for tryin’ to help out his sister, well, Mr. Hollister—” Wesley turned to include the other teachers “—and the rest of you grownups, that’s when we don’t take it no longer.”

  Hollister studied Wesley from squinted eyes. He looked for help from Mrs. Simmons, but she offered none. No one moved or made a sound.

  “You got to be punished, Wesley,” Hollister finally said, raising his arm.

  Wesley locked his hands behind his back and lifted his face to Hollister. It was a martyr’s pose; Wesley looked like Daniel surrendering to the Lion’s Den.

  “Well, sir, you can punish me if you want to, but I have told you the truth and you know it,” Wesley replied calmly. “You know I don’t lie—never.”

  I had never known Wesley to be so direct. I could feel a quiver of pride flutter through Lynn’s body as she stroked my head.

  Hollister was struck by the lightning of Wesley’s words. He was speechless, paralyzed from his jowls to his lips. The red left his face and a pale, drained-out expression of defeat crawled around the tight circle of his thin mouth. He had, at last, been challenged, and by a child, and he had lost.

  Mrs. Simmons moved to Wesley. She placed both hands on his shoulders and spoke quietly. “Mr. Hollister’s not saying you’ve lied, Wesley. He’s just trying to find out what happened.”

  “Yes’m. I know that.”

  Hollister was confused. His voice pleaded with Wesley. “But—but, why, Wesley? Why didn’t you just come and tell me or one of the other teachers about Dupree?”

  “Because this is between us and them. Because you would’ve let it go. Because you would’ve got mad at me for tattling.”

  “No—no, Wesley. I—would have…”

  “No, sir. There’s two sides in this school, and any side gets stepped on, it’s us.”

  “Wesley, that’s not true. There’s no difference.”

  “Yes, sir. There is a difference.”

  “What difference, Wesley?” Hollister was begging. “What’re you talking about?”

  Wesley stepped back and turned around. He looked at me and I knew it was the Right Time for telling. He looked at
Freeman and Freeman smiled; Freeman also knew. He turned back to Hollister.

  “Well, Mr. Hollister, you may not believe it,” Wesley said, “but the difference is electricity.”

  Hollister looked toward Mrs. Simmons and opened his mouth to speak, but he was suddenly dumb. He gestured with his belt and hands, asking for help.

  “Electricity? I don’t understand,” Mrs. Simmons said quietly. “What do you mean about electricity, Wesley?” She had an angel’s way of settling confusion.

  “They got electricity and we don’t,” Wesley told her. “That makes them think we’re not worth much. But that’s changin’.”

  Dupree spat and wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “What’re you talkin’ about, hick?”

  Hollister turned on his heel. “Shut up, Dupree Hixon.”

  “We’re getting electricity, too,” Wesley continued. “The REA is comin’ through this year.”

  “That’s right,” Freeman added triumphantly.

  Dupree laughed. “Electricity’s got nothin’ to do with it. You never gonna be nothing more than what you are, and that’s just a bunch of hicks.”

  “Dupree Hixon, you’re going to pay for that remark, young man,” Hollister snapped.

  “Mr. Hollister,” Wesley interrupted, “can I say something to Dupree?”

  Hollister looked angrily at Wesley. “What?”

  Wesley walked easily, confidently, across the divide separating the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side, walked straight to Dupree.

  “Dupree,” Wesley began, “the truth is, there’s not much difference between us, not much difference at all. It’s what you think, and what I think, that makes us different. All our lives, we been without some of them things you think were God-given to you. You been acting like we had some kind of disease because we don’t have all those things. But the REA will fix that. The REA will make things a little more equal, and you’ll see what I’m talkin’ about.”