8 Plus 1 (15 page)

Scrambling to my feet, I answered, “I was just taking a shortcut, and that crazy kid started chasing me.”

We stared at each other. His color confounded me: I would have to tell my father that
Les Noirs
was an inaccurate description. He wasn’t black at all.

I realized I owed him a debt for saving me from the young maniac with the red hair. Brushing myself off, I muttered, “Thanks.”

“What did you say?” he asked, the defiance still in his voice. Although he was possibly a year younger than I, as well as thin and scrawny, I felt that he would be a dangerous adversary.

“I said thanks.” Impatience made my own voice harsh. I checked my pocket to see if my loop of copper was safe.

“What’s that?” he asked.

I explained about the copper and the dump and Jakie the Junkman.

He held out his hand. I was astonished to see
the pink palm, a pale island in a sea of dark flesh. Sighing, I resigned myself to the idea of highway robbery. And the wire was worth at least twenty cents.

He studied the wire for a moment or two and handed it back to me. I shoved it in my pocket, turning away, eager to leave Alphabet Soup and return to the security of my own streets.

“Know what?” he called.

“What?” I asked over my shoulder, not really interested.

“Sometimes people come down here and stare at us like we in a zoo or something,” he said, the softest voice I’d ever heard, like caramel being poured lazy and sweet, skipping verbs now and then because they were too much trouble to bother with.

“You ought to get Nutsy to chase them away,” I said.

“He does.”

Remembering my recent close call, we both burst into laughter. To be friends, people must laugh together and later cry together, my father had often said.

“What’s a Canuck?” the Negro asked, his voice suddenly childlike as he approached.

“Everybody knows what a Canuck is,” I said suspiciously.

“I don’t.”

I explained to him about the French Canadians and how they had left the stricken, starving farms that were drying up like puddles in the sun to seek their destinies in the glorious United States of America. Seeing his interest, I added the dubious
story of how my
pépère
had sneaked one of his nephews across the border, in a sack thrown over his shoulder.

“How about you?” I asked finally.

As we walked through the neglected, debris-strewn streets, he told me that his name was Jefferson Johnson Stone, and I was awed by the splendor of the name issuing from someone so steeped in squalor. With a name like that, he should own the world and stride the streets like a king.

Remembering the history books in school, I longed to ask if his people had been slaves. But I didn’t want to insult him.

“Do you come from the South?” I hazarded.

He explained that his family came from a place outside of Boston. His father was looking for work. Jefferson had four brothers and three sisters. I was disappointed by his matter-of-fact recital; it sounded like the story of a regular Canuck family.

He pointed out his house, a small dilapidated structure, gaunt and weary, clothes hanging like flags of surrender on sagging lines. The odor of something fried a long time ago stained the air.

“We only been here a few weeks,” Jefferson said. “My ma’s still scrubbing the inside to make it homelike.”

Still trying to salvage drama, I summoned countless questions. For instance, I’d read in school about the Underground Railroad that had brought slaves to freedom in the North around Civil War times. Was that how Jefferson’s family had gotten to Boston?

“You like bread and sugar?” Jefferson asked, as we made our way toward the back steps of his house.

I nodded, although I’d never heard of that particular combination before. However, in those days, my stomach welcomed anything edible.

His mother was washing clothes in a bucket in the backyard while his father chopped wood. Children were scattered here and there, brown and tight-haired and big-eyed. No one paid any attention to me. The scent of spices emanated from the kitchen, destroying the stale fried smell that hovered in the air outside. Jefferson took rough slices of bread from an oil-cloth-covered box on the kitchen shelf and passed them under the trickly faucet. He sprinkled sugar on the damp surface of the bread.

“This week everybody got extra sugar at the commissary,” he said. “Surplus, they call it. My dad’s too proud to go—but I don’t mind.”

This attitude surprised me, because Jefferson carried himself like the proudest person I’d ever seen. I followed him through the doorway into the living room and was pondering with curiosity a plush velvet davenport that stood beside a brass bed—when I saw the pile of books on a table.

“That red sofa,” Jefferson was saying, “Ma said she could never leave it behind in Boston, so we took it with us. Pa bought it for her on their honeymoon.”

But I was scrutinizing the book titles:
The Sea Wolf
, by Jack London,
Sonnets from the Portuguese
,
The Complete Poems of Robert W. Service
, Zane Grey’s
Riders of the Purple Sage.

“These your books?” I asked.

His eyes slid away from me, and his hands seemed to be flying everywhere. I realized he was embarrassed.

Partly to allay his embarrassment and partly out of a leaping gladness, I said: “You like Robert W. Service? Wow! And Jack London! Did you read
Call of the Wild
?” I didn’t dare mention the sonnets—“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”—because I myself would have blushed. Yet, the sonnets had assuaged my aching spirit the spring before, when I fell hopelessly in love with Yvonne Blanchemaison.

The books launched us on a long conversation as we ate the limp bread, food that I didn’t find to my taste but that I swallowed out of politeness. But it was the good, rich talk that counted. Outside, in the shade of a weeping willow tree, we discussed our favorite authors, and I was astounded to discover that there was another fellow my age who sometimes liked a book more than a ball game.

Thus began my friendship with Jefferson Johnson Stone, although I didn’t regard it as friendship at the time. Brought together by books, we soon branched out and found other mutual interests. Collecting rocks, some of which looked like ancient Indian arrowheads. Practicing the quick draw with toy pistols. But mostly, it was the books. And music. He told me that one of his uncles was a jazz musician in Boston.

Jefferson didn’t have a library card, because he wasn’t yet enrolled in school, so I checked out books on my own card and brought them to him.
I asked him to meet me at the library, where we might explore the stacks together, but he always found some excuse for not coming. I didn’t press the issue, just as I preferred to visit him in Alphabet Soup rather than meet him somewhere in Frenchtown. I didn’t think twice about these circumstances; they just seemed natural. Somehow, Jefferson seemed to belong to the Soup. I couldn’t picture him away from there.

All during that summer, I journeyed to his neighborhood two or three times a week, always carrying a book or two. Once I brought my stamp collection, and another time my book of Frenchtown statistics. In those days, I was a great collector of data, passing the time by counting, for instance, the number of street lights lining Mechanic Street, how many elm trees grew on Third Street, how many three-story tenement houses there were in Frenchtown (I’d covered the first six streets at that time).

I was also secretive and felt a need for privacy. Just as my notebooks were a secret shared only with Jefferson, so were my visits to Alphabet Soup. I would steal away from Third Street, headed for a meeting with Jefferson, and the fact that no one knew my destination added drama to my visits. When Roger Gonthier asked me once where I disappeared to all the time, I smiled mysteriously. Afraid that he might follow me and regarding the threat as constituting a contest of skills, I always took a circuitous route to the Soup. It was almost like the movies.

After that first meeting when we had talked about our families, we ignored our backgrounds
and asked no more questions. The fact that he was a Negro occurred only once in conversation. Nutsy came walking toward us one afternoon and gave us wide berth when we passed, looking at Jefferson in obvious terror.

Jefferson chuckled, a dry sound. I realized he didn’t smile very often.

“That Nutsy,” he said. “He’s afraid of me.”

“Why?” Nutsy was almost a head taller and perhaps thirty pounds heavier.

“He thinks I’m the bogeyman,” Jefferson said. “Lots of people think that way. Pa says, ‘We in the Soup, all right.’ He wants to go back to Boston. Live with our own kind. No work here, and everybody lonesome.” He kicked at a stone, that odd embarrassment deepening his skin again. “I ain’t too lonesome.”

I myself blushed, flattered that perhaps our friendship had helped him conquer the loneliness. Thinking of the Midnight Raiders, I wondered whether it might be possible for Jefferson to become a member. His dark skin would give him a natural protection, and his thin, wiry body would make him an excellent squirmer through narrow garden rows. But I thought of all the complications, vague as they were in my mind, and dismissed it.

In an attempt to sympathize with him, I said, “My father’s out of work, too.”

“Yeah,” said Jefferson. “But he’s got a job to be
out
of. My pa’s got nothin’ at all.” Again, that syrup covered his words, but this time there was a bitterness in it. I felt as though he were rebuking me.

Silence fell between us, but not the companionable silence we had shared earlier. The afternoon seemed unbearably hot, all of a sudden, too hot to do anything. Finally, I made some sort of excuse and left. And it was the night of that same day that I sprawled on the ground listening to Jean-Paul outline plans for raiding the Toussaint garden and taking the vegetables to Alphabet Soup.

“Can’t we take the stuff someplace else?” Roger Gonthier asked.

“You afraid?” Jean-Paul challenged.

“Yes,” Roger admitted. As we all knew, Roger wasn’t the bravest fellow in the world, but he was honest.

“Listen, that’s where the real poor people live,” Jean-Paul said. “There’s even some niggers there.”

“Negroes,” I corrected.

Jean-Paul looked at me, puzzled. “That’s what I said. There’s a family of niggers there.”

I realized he had made no distinction between the words, and I was troubled for some reason.

“My
pépère’s
garden is a tough one,” Joe-Joe said, still doubtful about the ethics of stealing from his own grandfather.

“A garden is a garden,” Jean-Paul pronounced. “We have our Scout and we have a Light Man.” He and I exchanged looks of pride.

“You’ll need more than just one Light Man,” Joe-Joe countered. “My
pépère’s
got a light on the back piazza—and it stays on until he goes to bed. About midnight.”

I thought of Jefferson and what a Raider he would have made, his dark skin blending with the
shadows. In sudden inspiration, I blurted out, “Hey, why don’t we put black stuff on our faces?”

“With cork,” Jean-Paul said, slapping his hands together.

“Stove black,” Oscar Courier suggested.

And immediately I was sorry for having made the suggestion, as if I were insulting Jefferson in some manner. In fact, I was doubtful about the entire Alphabet Soup plan.

“A terrific idea,” Jean-Paul said, slapping me on the shoulder. He plunged into details: obtaining corks from the wine bottles in his uncle’s cellar and inspecting the Soup to see which families were most deserving. I was thankful that he did not assign me to scout Alphabet Soup.

The raid on the Toussaint garden, two nights later, was a thing of beauty. With burnt cork smeared on our hands and faces and wearing our darkest clothes, we didn’t bother knocking out any lights at all. Roger’s grandfather was such a suspicious type that a shattered light bulb would merely put him on his guard. The garden was at its height of ripeness, lush with tomatoes and cucumbers and all the other vegetables. Our sugar bags were quickly filled. Then we stole through the streets of Frenchtown, black-faced ghosts, laden with our treasures. A barking dog greeted us at the edge of Alphabet Soup, but Roger Gonthier quieted him immediately. It was later than usual. Because we had raided the garden in the glare of street lights and in the glow of a full moon, we’d waited until after ten o’clock for the attack. Passersby were as much a danger as garden owners.

Jean-Paul halted us. “Here we are.”

We crouched near some bushes by an abandoned shack. Jefferson’s house was across the street, a dim light shining in a front room. Music emanating from a tinny phonograph floated in the air. I felt vulnerable suddenly, as if on a brightly lit stage.

“Let’s get going,” I urged, wanting to be done with it.

Now we stole across the street, each assigned a particular house in the neighborhood. To my relief, I had not been chosen to leave my vegetables at Jefferson’s.

“Who’s that?” a voice called sharply.

We froze in our tracks, a frightened tableau.

A flashlight stabbed the air, its ray a long, bright dagger.

Another shout. A lantern leaped to life on Jefferson’s porch.

“What do we do?” Joe-Joe whispered frantically.

Never had the moonlight seemed so bright as we crouched there in the gutter.

Before Jean-Paul could answer, a rock sailed through the air. I saw it skimming toward us but was powerless to intercept it or even shout a warning. It struck Roger Gonthier on the cheek, and he bellowed with pain. Always swift to react, Jean-Paul dug into his bag of vegetables.

“Let them have it,” he commanded, flinging a cucumber in the general direction of Jefferson’s house, where all the lights now blazed with brilliance. People were rushing around wildly in the front yard.

We threw a barrage of vegetables in all directions, hurling them blindly as fast as we could pick them, pulled back our arms, and let them fly through the air. At the same time, we slowly retreated down the street. Islands of illumination flickered and flared as more lanterns and flashlights were brought out. We seemed to have the advantage for the moment; our artillery was immediately at hand, and we didn’t have to grope around for stones. Once in a while, we heard the satisfying squish of a tomato hitting a target. Dogs barked, children screamed.