My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (11 page)

Even without glancing down at them, I knew the other boys were watching me. Without our clothes on, we weren’t all that different. I had a better haircut.

I started down and thought how much fun this was. It was a lot better than the rec center pool where I had taken lessons every summer for the past four years. I wondered how warm—or how cold—the water would be and I heard Richard yelling something.

The surface of the water was rushing up at me—or at least that was the way it seemed to be happening—when his words and his message sank in.

It was an important one, but I was too late.

As I started to straighten up I slammed into the water rear end first. It wasn’t a belly flop. It was more a butt flop. I gasped because—man, oh, man—did that hurt!

Of course, gasping just as your head goes under water is not a good idea.

I kept going down into the water and it kept getting colder. I felt the muddy river bottom and stopped. The current was gently pulling me along. I automatically went into a crouch and pushed off. I opened my eyes and it was slowly getting lighter, and warmer, too, as I kicked my way up.

When I finally broke through the surface I started coughing and then I started moaning and I could hear the other boys laughing.

“You all right?” I heard Richard call out.

I took a deep breath. I was treading water. I hadn’t gone too far downstream. The pain in my rump had lessened a little, from a 10 down to a 9.5.

“I’ve been better,” I said

He really hooted at that one. “You all right, Michael,” he said. “You all right.”

We swam and splashed and threw mud at each other and swung out on the rope for another hour or so. It was as if I had passed some kind of an initiation. I was one of them: just another kid.

When we were all too tired to stay in the water anymore we climbed up to a warm spot by the bushes and let the sun dry us off. I noticed that the skin on my shoulders was starting to turn pink.

“I think I’m getting sunburned,” I said and Richard looked at his shoulders and said, “Oh, no, me, too” and everybody laughed.

“How did you guys meet?” I asked. “You go to the same school?”

They all laughed at that, too.

“Michael,” Richard said, sounding very serious, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a Negro.”

“You are?” Charlie said, sounding shocked.

“Him and Bucky and Martin . . .” That was the third white kid. “ . . .all go to the white school,” Richard said. “Nate and I go to the colored school. Or we did. I went up through fourth grade. Nate’s still going. He just got done with fifth.”

“You quit school after the fourth grade?” I asked, shocked.

“I didn’t just quit,” he said, sounding a little offended. “I had to go to work.”

“You work? I mean full time?”

“Well, yeah,” Richard said. “Lots of boys do. Girls, too.”

“And they don’t go to school?” I asked.

“Yeah, where you been?” he asked. “Kids work in mines and in factories and on farms and anywhere else they can make fifteen or twenty cents.”

“An hour!” Again, I was shocked.

“An hour,” Richard said, imitating me.  “Listen to him. Twenty cents in a day.”

“Eight hours to . . .”

“Eight?” Richard said. “No. Ten. Twelve. Sometimes fourteen. I’m lucky. I get off some Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday. I got a good job.”

“What’s your job?” I asked.

“In town. At the colored blacksmith’s shop.”

“What do you do?”

“Whatever he tells me.”

“Richard’s going to be a blacksmith when he grows up,” Charlie said.

“I sure hope so,” Richard said. “Every town’s always going to need a good blacksmith or two.”

“You sure got the arm for it,” Charlie said, pointing at his own head. The other boys laughed. It was obvious I didn’t get the joke.

“Richard can throw a rock a lot farther than I can,” Charlie said. “Show him.”

Richard easily hopped up and then loped down to the river’s edge. He found a rock about the size of a pool ball and climbed back up.

“What you want me to hit?” he asked me. I pointed at a tree that was maybe twenty feet away.

“Pshaw,” he said. “See that stump?” He pointed across the river to a spot that was maybe a hundred feet from us.

“Uh huh,” I said as he cocked his arm and let the rock fly. It slammed into the rotting piece of wood and chunks of stump went everywhere.

I had never seen any kid throw anything that far or that fast with such accuracy. “You should play baseball,” I said.

“I do,” he answered. “Sunday afternoons. The Culver City colored boys team.”

“You keep at it,” I said, “and you could play professionally. No kidding. In the major league.”

Suddenly it was deathly quiet.

“That’s not funny,” Charlie said.

“What?” I asked.

“You know a Negro can’t play in the major leagues.”

How was I supposed to know that? This was a whole different world.

“But you swim together,” I protested, trying to defend myself.

“Here,” Charlie said. “Not in town. Not even near town.”

“Coloreds got separate everything,” Bucky said.

“But you guys are friends,” I said. “I know you are.”

“That’s a fact,” Richard said. “But last summer when Charlie and Bucky and Martin here found our swimming hole we didn’t give it up without a fight.”

“The rocks were flying,” Charlie agreed, rubbing his head. “Richard and Nate were up in the bushes over there on the other side. We couldn’t even see who was throwing them.”

“That was a battle, all right,” Richard said.

“But now you both use it,” I said.

“Uh huh,” Charlie said. “That was a hot summer and neither one of us could get in the water without getting shelled by the other. We had to call a truce.”

“Too hot to fight,” Richard agreed, “even if you
are
winning, and we were. But I’ll never forget old Bucky’s face when he saw me and Nate coming out of those bushes.”

“He looked pretty shocked, all right,” Charlie said. “And then he says, ‘Ah, who cares? We’re all sweatin’ like hogs. I’m goin’ swimmin’.’”

“This must be the best place in the whole world to swim,” I said and no one disagreed with me.

“I could spend the rest of my life at Fair Brook,” Charlie said.

Chapter 18

You Call
This
Toilet Paper?

The walk home seemed a lot longer. I was really tired and I needed to go to the bathroom, too. I mean poop, not pee. It wasn’t like we were passing any gas stations or drive-ins along the way that had restrooms. I think Charlie was tired, too. We hardly talked at all.

When we finally started heading up the driveway, I said, “I got first dibs on the bathroom.”

“What?” he asked. We sure said that a lot to one another.

“Or have you got more than one?” I asked.

“More than one?”

“Nature calls,” I said. “I need to . . . you know.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sure. People in the future still do that?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “and I need to right now.”

“Come on,” he said, leading me around the back of the summer kitchen and along a well-worn path. I knew what it was because I’ve been camping. It was an outhouse. Painted the same color as the regular house, with a little sliver of a moon carved into the door.

“You’re kidding,” I said. He shrugged. I opened the door and stepped up into it. I noticed that outhouses hadn’t changed much in eighty-eight years. This one smelled pretty much like every other one I had been in.

“I gotta get started on my chores,” Charlie said. “You take your time.” He shut the door and it was dark in there. Warm, too. I could hear a fly buzzing up in one corner.  There wasn’t a toilet seat, just a hole in a board.

Good enough! I sat down and took care of my business and then started looking around for the toilet paper. Uh oh.

On the seat next to me was an old “Sears, Roebuck and Co.” store catalog. I leafed through it while I continued to sit there and wait for Charlie to come back. I figured I could tell him what I needed.

I was amazed at how cheap everything in the catalog was. Just a few dollars for suits and dresses and musical instruments and just about anything else you could ever want.

There was no electronic stuff, not even some big, old radios. I wondered when the radio was invented. I tried to imagine my family going through a day without electricity, hot and cold water, flush toilets, radios, televisions, VCRs, microwaves. The list went on and on. I didn’t see how anything new could ever be invented. I figured we already had it all.

My buns were getting kind of sore from just sitting there and, truth be told, they might have been a little sunburned, too. I heard someone walking around outside and so I shouted, “Hey!”

“What?” a little voice answered.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Sissie,” she said.

“Sissie, where’s Charlie?” I asked.

“He’s doing his chores,” she said.

“There’s no toilet paper in here,” I said.

“Mama has toilet water,” she answered.

“She has what?” I asked.

“Toilet water,” she said through the door. “It smells real good. One time Brigid put some on me and I smelled just like lilacs and Papa said . . .”

“No,” I said, “I need toilet paper.”

“What’s that?”

She was kidding, right?

“It’s a roll of perforated paper,” I said. “You tear off a piece after you’re done . . . after you’re done and you use it to . . .”

“What’s
perfrated
?”

“What?”

“What’s
perfrated
?” she asked again.

“That doesn’t matter, Sissie,” I said. “I need some paper.”

“Oh,” she said. “To wipe your butt.”

“Uh . . . . Well, yeah.”

“It’s supposed to be in there,” she said.

“I know,” I answered, “but it’s not. Could you go get Charlie?”

“Charlie’s doing his chores. Can you hurry up in there? I gotta go.”

“Sissie,” I said, “there’s no paper. I can’t . . .”

“The catalog isn’t in there?” she asked.

“The catalog?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Right next to where you’re sitting. Rip out a page and hurry up ’cause I gotta go!”

It was then I noticed the first third of the catalog was missing. The pages had been ripped out.

“Come on!” she was yelling and starting to bang on the door with her little hands.

“Somebody fall in?” I heard Pat ask and laugh.

“Cousin Michael’s in there,” Sissie said, “and he’s talking about toilet water and he won’t give me a turn and I gotta . . . .” She went on and on and I ripped out a couple of pages and used them. They had drawings and descriptions of ladies shoes with buttons. At least the paper was more like a newspaper than some slick magazine.

“All yours,” I said, stepping out.