Deep in the Heart of Me (33 page)

"They ain't no better player all-around than Satchel Paige," he says. "Cool Papa Bell…."

"Don't disrespect Babe," I say cutting him off cause he's been going on. And on about Negro baseball.

"Y'all say that…the Babe," he says like he's put upon to hear it. He moves some and catches his breath.

I move some and catch mine even though I took the bed last night.

So the days pass, fast, and always slow, one story, one argument, one memory, one idea.

We live out of two buckets, one with water and a dipper, the other to relieve ourselves. They haven't filled the one or emptied the other for four days. Fortunately, they don't feed us enough to keep a cricket alive so there ain't so much going out. We can piss on the wall, and shit in the corner comes to it. He tells me to go on and piss in the water. "I did," he says, and I look at him quick, and he laughs, and I guess that's his idea of a joke but I ain't laughing.

We take to playing shadow ball. A lot. We figure it must have been invented by guys in jail. Shadow ball is baseball with no ball, just the movements like there is a ball and hand to God you throw that air-ball long enough you can see it and feel it, you can hear it smack into your hand.

Then there's the bright side. The guards haven't hit us in a while, not since they put us in one cell.

And Ulysses tells me how to play it with the guards, not the air-ball, though he's got plenty of advice about that too, but how to behave around the guards to get the best resolution to this fix.

"They ain't gonna change my mind about me being nothing and all that shit," I say. "My dad fought in the Great War. My uncles. We pay good men their due, but we don't bow to tyrants."

"Boy, you think you're in the Revolutionary war or something? This is Illinois State Industrial School for muckers around and bums and delinquents. This ain't about liberty or death, it's about giving Boss what he wants and laying low so you can live through it."

"Then they get by with it," I say.

"That's right," he says. "Maybe there's hope for you after all."

So we play ball and move some. No big moves, just pitch and some easy hits. We argue, mostly about baseball. I get mad cause he's like I thought when he gets going…unbearable. Right now he's arguing whose arms are longer. We compare and I swear his are same as mine, and he insists he's got a quarter inch on me, and that's because he's moving his shoulder forward but you can't tell him nothing.

I've fallen into telling him about those cookies I ain't likely to see much less taste. "I sure wonder what they did with all that meant for me." All that Sobe made. She surely never wanted it going down their yappers.

"They's dunking it in their coffee about now," he says winding up easy as he shadow-pitches me the ball.

Then he fights with me about whether or not it was a strike.

"I told you it was a triple," I say about ready to defend myself. "Batter calls."

"Unless you're pitching," he says.

Well, I did say that when I was pitching—pitcher calls.

"Just shut-up and let it stand like I say," I say.

"You gonna be king of this here, go on," he says. "You're king of the shit bucket. How you like it?" he says.

"How you like your face held in that bucket," I say. Well, we both got up on the wrong side of the bed, but since we're taking turns on the floor and he had it last night, he's just damned crabby.

Instead of getting offended, he stares at me. I'm bracing myself in case he charges.

But he breaks into this big smile he's got then he laughs. I can't help but laugh too.

"Pitch me the damn ball," I say, but I don't get it all the way out before he charges. He takes me down on the cot, and even that hurts like pure hell, and he can't follow through because he's writhing around moaning.

I realize I could have stopped him, but I didn't want to. "Hope you're happy," I say instead.

He's still carrying on. He hit his knee bone.

"You're useless," I say, and all of a sudden all we'd done to get through is just shit. I want out of this stinking place, and I'm sick of looking at Ulysses.

"What you belly-aching about?" he says sitting up and slowly straightening his leg. "You're gonna get out of here. White boy with a daddy fighting right now to get his ass free."

He tells me how they all know it. No one's ever had a dad come here and carry on before. I've already told him I got in here on accident. I didn't tell him all of it, but I said it was an accident and he laughed and he said I did something bad, real bad, but I tell him to choke on it.

I asked him what he did, and he says he got put in for not having a place to go. He was traveling with his uncle, going north to work in a factory when his uncle got in a fight and got arrested and they sent Ulysses here.

"But you didn't do anything, did you?" I say.

He finds this funny. I know now to watch him. Just because he's laughing, or smiling for that matter, don't mean a thing.

"Will your uncle come looking for you? Maybe he doesn't know where you are," I say.

"Negroes get separated all the time," he says. "We up and disappear and everybody scratch their heads and say wonder what happened to old Mose."

He's doing a pantomime like he's a bent over looking under rocks for Mose, I guess, and it's the closest I've been to laughing for a while.

Morning seven, I wake up and for a split second, I think I'm back home. God, I wish I was. I think of Joseph, that hug on me.

I meant to do better by him, and when I get out, I will. I'll take him fishing as soon as it warms up.

Maybe. If I get out. I look over, and Ulie is looking back.

"They gonna let us out?" I say.

He says he doesn't deserve to be down here. All he did was snatch a biscuit in the line.

I don't know. Sounds like bullshit to me.

He's been at the school a long time. Two years and thirteen days, he says.

"What were they hitting on you for? That first night I came in," I say.

"I don't know," he says. "You think they need a reason? That's first thing you gotta learn. You get beat for being here."

So when they finally come to bring us the sorriest excuse for a meal, but also the best tasting ever served to starving jailbirds, I just stay quiet and sullen. It seems to be what they want. It's not so hard to seem like I got blues, because I do have them. I see those guards I get mad as heck, and then I want to beg same time for some knowledge of when I'm getting out of this stinkhole, or if they heard word of my family. Or my cookies, how about them?

"Stay quiet," Ulie tells me. "Let them see you're sorrowful and learning."

"Learning what," I say, "…what a bunch of jackasses they are?" I think of Jack Bastard, and he's worth about two each of them.

"Learning to give them what they want," he says.

"Because I'm a coward?"

"Got to let them know you can bow down," he says. "That's all they care about. Your pride ain't caught up to the way of it."

"Listen…you been here a while. You ever see someone not get out of here? They need us…to work things."

He laughs. "I feel sorry for you white boys."

"Sorry for me?" I can't believe it. Who does he think he is sitting here family-less and stinking and feeling sorry for me?

"Can't get over the notion you're free," he says.

"We're Americans," I say.

"Well, they gonna work this American until I'm ready for State Prison, and they can move me to a chain-gang," he says, throwing that air ball hard as he probably can.

"That all the hope you got for yourself?" I say. I've about had his melancholy attitude.

"I got plenty hope for myself," he says like I've smashed his toes or something. "Maybe I can play every position ever created in baseball like I was born to it. How about that?"

He's serious.

"Says who?" I say.

"Says anyone who ever watched me play," he says.

I am plain sick of him. His moods. His lies. His voice. His face. Unbearable.

"You've been drinking out of the shit bucket," I say pretty meanly.

He's getting jittery.

"Best get it out of your mind," I say, in case I'm right, and he's fixing to charge me.

"What's that? Get what out of my mind? How you looked on that shower floor after Shad got done with you?" he says and we are staring, and it's gonna get ugly cause he's as sick of me as I am of him, and that's just too bad cause I ain't done a thing, and this was my cell to begin with.

"How'd you like a dunking," I say nodding toward that bucket and I really mean it this time. But just about when I got him by the neck, we hear that door open upstairs.

"That's right," he says pushing me off. "Just like that."

"What?"

"It wasn't a biscuit. It was a carrot."

What? A carrot?

A carrot.

"Why?" I say.

He doesn't answer, and I watch him change like he always does when they are around. He is quiet and polite and wary and now that I know him some I can feel how ready he is to do what they want, and I don't believe any of it, but it doesn't matter what I think, as long as they believe I'll obey. That’s what he's saying.

They open the door, and he moves to the wall, and I'm sitting on the bed, and I'm paying attention, and I suppose I'm learning something about being a convict.

They look at me, and I blink away anything I was feeling like being mad at Ulysses for running his mouth and mad that I've got to be locked in a cage like a sow at a show.

They have a cloth with some food, and they don't give it to me, they give it to Ulie.

"Feed yourself and any leftover feed him," the guard says to him.

Then to me one of them motions to our buckets, which are opposite sides of the room.

I don't know what game this is. Worried as I am about Ulysses being given all the food, I am losing my mind from this idleness and emptying that bucket and filling the other means going outside. I don't think there's a day since I've been born until lately that I haven't gone outside. Just to smell the air and feel it on my face. Well, I'd do plenty for the chance.

So I look at Ulysses, and he's holding that bag and opening it up slow and watching me, and them, and moving his hand inside.

One of them pokes me with a stick so I get to the buckets. I try not to worry so hard about the food. I try to just concentrate on not slopping my leg from that full bucket. It's heavy as shit, well it is shit, and they yell at me not to mess the stairs. I get it outside and that cold clean. It's deep snow, and I work not to slip. I'm in my torn shirt, and I know I stink, but I don't have to smell any of it now, except this bucket. I take it in back and dump it where they say. Then I get to go in the well house and fill that other. I see boys here or there, and I smell supper cooking from the mess, and I'm so hungry I can't feel it anymore, but one bite of something and it would wake up—my appetite--and I'd be a rabid wolf then.

I try to see everything while I look like I'm not looking at anything. Even with snow it's…colorful. I might die if I have to go back down there to that stinking hole, but I know I have to. That's my surrender.

But I keep my head straight, and I let that cold go into me like strength. And I peek up, and there's the sky, oh God, the sky, and that pale moon you can still see in the gray color.

It's the moon we share, and I think of her, of Sobe and how anytime I've been close it's like she's small and her heart beats fast and touching her is like touching sunshine, something you've only felt from far away. Maybe I am crazy now because I can't tell anymore, but I feel something in me, something only I can know. What makes me special is them—all of those who've taken a chance on me. My family. Sobe. And now…Ulysses. They are what's special…about me-Tonio Clannan…whose father fought in the Great War…whose family owns land…who loves a girl who baked him a hundred cookies…a hundred of them.

They take me back down then. And if Ulie hasn't eaten my share of the food, I'm gonna tell him what I saw and how I felt until he sees it too.

The sky and the moon haven't gone away just because we can't see them. It's beautiful out there.

"C'mon," the guard says, and I look at Ulie, and I wait for him to go out, then I follow.

We move with heavy steps even though we're pounds lighter than when we went in, and neither of us ran fat before that.

My dad likes…liked to brag on my muscle. He says…said I was a hundred and forty pounds of solid home-grown and he'd slap my back proud and I'd look at Joseph and try not to laugh or be proud, so I'd say, "I'm not livestock." And Dad would say, "What?" but he wouldn't want an answer he'd be so full of his own…joy over his son.

Maybe I'm a scarecrow now.

Outside, it's night. I close my eyes and feel the snow pelt my face.

"Get cleaned up both," Guard says. Then to me, "You've got company tomorrow."

I wonder who but I don't ask.

"That's right," he says. "No more trouble now."

"Yes, Sir," Ulie says, and he's looking holes through me.

"Yes, Sir," I say.

"Straight in, clean up and bed," Guard says.

So we turn and walk slow, my arm touching Ulie's sometimes but I already know he's pulling away.

When we get under that half freezing water, and we're washing off two weeks of stink, he says, "You gonna be a model member of the Illinois Industrial School for Boys."

I don't answer half of what he says. It's not conversing, just his mouth on the go.

"You stay just like tonight with them, and they won't put you down there no more."

I think he's trying to offer me comfort.

"Less I take a carrot," I say. I'll never get over how he made me that carrot and took such a rap for it.

He smiles while he scrubs under his arm. "That's it, boy. You here to be reformed. You here to understand you're no different than me."

"That was the lesson?" I say.

He shrugs and laughs and goes on scrubbing. "That's right boss, in here you're a Negro."

He's grinning even as he tips back his head and lets that water stream.

A minute passes, and I guess I get to staring. I'm thinking of a lot of things, how it feels right now, and how it might feel to always have someone like the real Boss thinking he has a right to be powerful over you, and I'm thinking of one difference in me and Ulie that might make all the difference—he's got no family coming to visit. No one to be angry for him, sorry for him, no one to care that he's treated poorly, no one to try and get him out or wait for him once he is out.

"What you looking at me like that for?" he says as he shuts off the water. "You don't like equality or something?" he's laughing again.

I turn my back on him and scrub my face.

Dawn cracks and I'm still awake. I'm tired, I know that, but I won't sleep when they're driving toward me. I'm worried they won't get in, but even so I'll be able to see them through the fence. My bet is it's Pat and Dad this time. If Dad comes, I'll know Maman is all right.

In the morning I don't have to wait for the sinks, they leave one open for me. I look around thinking they made a mistake, but no, they are letting me go ahead. I look around for Ulie, but I don't see him so I get busy and brush my teeth, twice, and even though it is clean from last night I scrub my face again and behind my neck and ears.

I get dressed, and I follow those others to the mess hall, and every now and then one boy or another pushes me ahead in line, and I get my food pretty quick. Well, I lift my tray, and I walk to the nearest table and sit there, my back to most of them cause I want to see out the window and even though it's too early and gray I want to see the road and if my folks are on it.

Someone passes, and I get an extra biscuit dropped near my plate. Another goes by, and I got some butter, and another and I got a spare bowl of grits.

I don't know what to say to it because they never look at me, just go on by. I look around for Ulie, and I don't see him, but I wonder if he's getting this too, or if I should save some for him.

Well, I never had so much food since those pancakes back in Springfield. I try not to look like a pig, but I take one bite of grits, and they taste as good as apple pie or something. I dunk a biscuit in the watery part and eat that, and put my head down and just keep going.

I see Dad's truck this time, and I go tearing out of that hall then and remember to walk as I cross the yard. It's freezing, but I am waiting by the gate, standing back some cause they don't like us to crowd. So I'm not crowding, and there are only two of us here anyway.

They are at the checkpoint, and I think I'll blow apart. It's my dad all right, and Joseph it looks like.

I take in a shaky breath. I can't believe it. My dad. My dad.

He's talking to the guard at the gate, and my stomach is clenched, and I'm waiting for them to tell him to turn around. I'm just waiting for it.

I'll go to the fence, that's all. I'll talk through the fence. It will be all right. It won't hurt at all.

But pretty soon they come through, and I'm waiting because we're not supposed to go near the parked cars.

Dad gets out, and I'm waiting until he reaches me. I pick up my cap and smooth my hair back it's so long. He sees me and he waves and a smile, but he looks about weathered as me maybe, or maybe not, I don't know, he's a sight for sore eyes. Then I see Joseph come around the other side, but it's not Joseph, he takes off his cap, and it's short hair, but too much for any boy I ever knew. He's in britches, but it's her. I always know her.

I do run then. I run right for her and I get her in my arms pretty quick, I'm not shy and she isn't. I have Sobe in my arms, and it's the best thing to ever happen to me.

"Set her down son," Dad is saying, but I'm holding onto her, and I don't have it in me to know how to set her down.

But I do. I set her down, and I stare at her. She's lost weight. I run my hand down the side of her face and through her hair, and I sift it through my hand. It's short and shiny and soft.

"Son," Dad says.

Sobe is looking at me. She touches my face too. "Tonio," she says so softly.

"I'm all right," I say.

Dad tugs on me then, and I give over, and he throws his arms around me, and I hold onto him.

He sets me back some and his hands are going over me. "What happened here?"

We don't speak of house business. "Nothing. Hard work."

"Hard work? Since when is that new? They feeding you?"

"What about the food we sent," Sobe says.

"You keeping your spirits up?" he says, like 'my spirits' are my lookout.

"How's Maman?" I say.

"She's…still in the bed but…come spring she'll be good as new," he says still looking me over.

"Sobe?" I say reaching for her and she comes easily beside me, and I wrap my arm around her.

"Stronger every day," Sobe says with false light cheer.

Dad puts his hand back of my neck and touches his forehead to mine. "I've got a lawyer, a real hellcat they say." He pulls back then. "He's working on things to get you out. That judge was compromised. If that Sheriff wasn't a lawman, that's the hard thing. They want to see you get something…a slap on the wrist. Denison thinks six months you'll be out."

I try not to repeat it- six months. I try not to sink.

"You've already done a month, Tonio. A whole month!" Sobe says with tears in her eyes.

"He's working on a transfer to St. Jacob's. You'll be further from home, and I don't know if we'll make it with the snow, but they say it's better than this."

"No," I say.

"No?" he says.

Sobe tightens her fist in the back of my coat.

It just comes out so I guess it's the truth. I don't want to have it easier. I don't want to start over figuring out another place, being locked in the basement of a Catholic church or something.

I don't want to go further from home. Not for anything.

"I'll be fine here," I say.

"Look at you, boy. This place is no good."

"It's fine. I'm fine," I say. I'm sick saying it, but I'm not going anywhere else.

We are quiet then, but I feel Dad being angry. "I can see you've been in fights," he says. "You don't get enough to eat. My son. My…," he pounds his chest.

He has to turn away like he can't look at me.

"Dad," I say, holding Sobe tight against me. "Dad."

He turns but he looks at the ground. "Your mother…she blames me," he says. "She thinks I should be able to make the earth go the other way. And what did I fight for…all along…I…."

He's not like before. He's not like I've ever seen him.

"I didn't have time to write her," I say. "But I will. Tell her that. In the meantime, you tell her I'm fine. I am. You tell her I'm making shirts. When I get home, I'll show her."

"Shirts?" Dad says, not comforted. "That's what they have you do? Why not the livestock? You're not born to sit at some…you're made for the outdoors at least."

"I do the milking too. On weekends." But not this morning. I don't know where they will put me since I just got out of jail.

One of the guards tells us to move. I can take them into the mess hall. It's better than this. So we go in there. There is one other old man visiting with a boy. We sit far enough away at one of the tables. Sobe is beside me, Dad across.

I don't care what we talk about. I just want to look at Sobe.

"Are they very cruel?" she says, a waver in her question.

"No," I say. "They are fine."

Dad says he has business in the office, and he'll be right back.

I say, "What business?" When he makes trouble, it's worse.

"We brought hams," he says.

"Dad…you might as well…." I don't want to tell him that it's iffy we'll ever get that meat. He'll just make a stink, and I'll pay for it.

"Let me do this," he says.

I shake my head, but he takes my cap off my head cause we're indoors, and he tries to be playful about it, but my hair is all over, and I smooth it back, and I don't appreciate it, and I put the cap on and he doesn't have a thing to say about it.

Sobe grins at me.

"It's long as yours," I say and maybe I shouldn't. She looks away like she's embarrassed.

"I know you…I'm sorry," she says.

"I…why'd you do it?" I say.

"I just…."

"Are you all right?"

"I am," she says. "Now I am."

I think she means she's good because she's with me. "Cause of the farm?" I say.

She plucks at my sleeve and puts her head down and looks up at me and smiles like she's embarrassed.

I check, and the guard is leading Dad out, so I run my hand through her hair again.

"Hey," I say.

"Tonio," she whispers.

"Ever think we'd be married?" I say.

She blushes and licks her lips. "Course I do."

"We ain't now, are we," I say. "You still…?"

"Yes," she says softly.

"Say it then," I say. I never planned to be bold or something, but I'm so serious all of a sudden.

She looks around like she's fixing to steal. There are just the old man and the boy.

"Well, I think of you all the time," she whispers, her eyes land on me and damn. She's got tears.

"I'm no sad story," I say. That's all we need then, just looking at each other.

I take Sobe's hand. "You've been working," I say.

Her hand is rough. I want to kiss her palm. But maybe in here…I don't know.

But if I weren't in here, I'd know exactly what to do I think.

"Tonio, this is all my fault."

"No," I say. I don't want that kind of talk.

"I've missed you so much," she cries softly. "It's horrible here, and you won't even say it."

"You miss me?" I say just to get her to tell me again.

"Yes," she says. "I miss you, Antonio."

She hasn't called me that in such a long time. It never sounded better than now.

I look over at the old man and the boy, and they are watching us. I can't worry it. I pull her against me again. "A little…," I whisper close to her face, and she lifts her lips, and I press mine there. I keep waiting to feel a club against my head because this can't be allowed. Surely it can't.

It's too much. I have to turn away. Her softness is breaking me.

A couple of boys have come from the kitchen, and they are staring and calling to each other to come see. It will be all over now. Crude and relentless.

"Don't come here again," I tell her. "I'll be home soon enough. Don't come here. It's not a place I ever, ever want you to be. I don't even want a memory of you here."

"You're asking me…it could be until summer, Tonio." She's got my hands now. She's rubbing her thumb over some of the places that are still healing.

"It will go fast. It's…too hard to see you then…," I say. I have to change the subject, "What's it like at home? Tell me the truth."