Seeing Red (23 page)

He jutted his jaw out just like one of those Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots, and my hand was itching to knock his block off. “What do you want, boy?”

“To see Rosie.”

“She’s busy.”

He started to shut the door and I knew it was now or never. I put both hands out to stop the door. “I don’t think so!”

Mr Dunlop started breathing heavy, and he bared his teeth. “What did you say?” He said it so slowly it slowed my brain down, too, giving me a chance to think. And I thought about what Beau said about standing up to bullies. But I sure wished Mr Reynolds were still around, so I thought of a way to make him still be around, sort of. “I just saw Mr Reynolds and he…he said I should come see Rosie.”

Mr Dunlop flinched, then eyeballed me to see if I was lying.

I figured I was in deep enough I might as well be sure the lie worked. I had to make it sound lawyer-like. “And he said for me to call him immediately if for any reason she was unavailable.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, but I saw him take a gulping swallow. “So, you’re his little toady, huh? Figures. Can’t expect more than that from a Porter.” He spat on the porch, just missing my sneaker.

Much as I wanted to give him a swift kick where it’d do the most damage, I stood there silently, hoping my plan would work.

He half turned his head inside. “Rosie! It’s your little puppy dog back to see you again.”

When I got her far enough away from her house, I spun her around to look at me. “You don’t have to put up with that, you know!”

She blinked back tears. I didn’t know why I was yelling at her. I knew it wasn’t her fault. But I also knew there wasn’t much I could do about it, and that made me so mad I couldn’t help yelling. “He shouldn’t treat you like that!”

That’s when she started crying.
Shoot!
I hadn’t meant to do that. I swallowed hard and stepped over to her. “I’m sorry, Rosie.”

She had her face in her hands but still managed to choke out, “It’s all right.”

I took a step closer. “And I’m sorry about Darrell. I didn’t want him sent to juvie, honest.”

“I know,” she sobbed.

When I put my arms around her, it was like she was in a little cocoon, all wrapped up and safe. I even patted her back. It felt like the right thing to do.

As I held Rosie, feeling her warmth and her shaking sobs, I wondered what was going to happen to her. She was nothing like Darrell, but still, being treated bad had to do something to you. Something had to give. Just like with cars. You could drive a car while the radiator got hotter and hotter and keep ignoring it for a while, but all of a sudden, one steamy day, it would blow up in your face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

J

I told Mama what had happened and even though her face went white, including her lips, all she said was she’d tell the sheriff what I’d heard but we didn’t know for sure what was happening and all we could do, really, was be the best friends to Rosie that we could. It made me mad, but she reminded me about what Daddy always said, that a man’s home is his castle and you can’t interfere with someone else’s family. Still I think even Daddy would’ve interfered at this point.

I went over there after school on Friday and several times Saturday morning, spying, but Rosie always seemed somewhere else. Mama went over, too, coming up with all kinds of dumb reasons, like bringing Mrs Dunlop a magazine article about quilting or asking to borrow cake decorations when she wasn’t even baking a cake.

By Saturday afternoon Mama said I’d best concentrate on my Foxfire paper because our first draft was due Monday. I wondered if Miss Miller had told Mama what she told me, that my English grade “couldn’t withstand another poor mark”. I was so mad at Mr Dunlop and everything he stood for that I had a lot to say about the Freedom Church. First about what Old Man Porter did to help George Freeman and his congregation, then about everything that the Dunlops did to destroy it. J was distracting me, though, because he was outside crying. At first I ignored him because if he wasn’t bawling for Mama, then he wasn’t really hurt, but after a while it got plain annoying.

“What’s wrong, J?” I called out my window as I kept writing.

He quit crying and his gravelly footsteps came as close as the pine tree by my window would allow, before I heard him slide down against the side of the house. His crying started up again, louder this time.

“Will you quit your boo-hooing?”

“I c-cain’t.”

“Yes, you can. Just shut your mouth.”

“It won’t stick,” he moaned.

“I’ll give you some glue.”

“It won’t work.” He started wailing.

“Shoot, J! What is your problem?”

“My – my – Band-Aid won’t stiiiiiick.”

I let out a big sigh. “Aw, for heaven’s sake!”

I got up and leaned out my window. J was sitting against the house, trying to put a ratty old Band-Aid on his knee.

“Of course it won’t stick! You need a fresh Band-Aid.”

“I don’t want a fresh Band-Aid. I’m saving this one.” He dropped his head to his knee and cried such big sobs I even started feeling bad for him. I pulled myself out of my window, scratching myself on the pine, as usual, and dropped onto the gravel next to him.

“Come on, J, it couldn’t hurt that much.” I looked at his knee. “You don’t even have a cut!”

He started bawling so loud it hurt my ear.

I stood up to get away from the noise. “I’ll get you a new Band-Aid, even though you don’t need one.” I tried to take the old Band-Aid away from him, but he wouldn’t let go of the dirty used-up wad.

“Nooooooo! It’s mine! Daddy put it on me the day he died!”

I stared at him and slid down the side of the house to the ground. He kept crying, and I put my arm around him. I didn’t know what to say, but he spoke first.

“How come he did more stuff with you than with me?”

“Well – because – for one thing, I liked to hang out in the shop and you didn’t.”

J stopped snivelling and looked at me. “Yeah…” he said slowly.

“And maybe because I was older there was just more stuff I could do with him, more things to talk about, since I’m practically a grown man myself.”

J wiped his eyes and stared off into the distance like he was trying to take it all in.

“He did stuff with you, too, right?” I went on. “He took you to get ice cream since you were both so fond of it.”

“Rocky Road,” he said.

“Right. And how about piggyback rides? He didn’t give me piggyback rides.”

J grinned. “You’re too big, Red!”

“See, that’s what I mean. He did different stuff with us because we’re different.” I remembered something that I’d never felt like telling J, until now. “You know something else?”

“What?”

“Daddy said you’re smart and tough and fearless. He said you can tackle anything. And if you don’t get to college on a sports scholarship it doesn’t matter, because you’re smart enough to get in without it.”

“He said all that?”

“Yup. He thought the world of you…Bamm-Bamm.”

J smirked and stared at the shop for a while. He was fingering his Band-Aid, and I guess he saw me looking at it because, real quick, he said, “I’m still keeping this.”

“You should.”

“Don’t tell Mama about it because she’d probably throw it out.”

I nodded. “Tell you what, you need a good place to keep that. I’ve got an idea.”

I led him into the shop. “Give me your Band-Aid.”

He hung onto it.

“You’ll get it back in a minute, I promise.”

Slowly, he handed it over.

I went up the steps to the back of the shop and opened up the first-aid kit. I remembered a tiny little tin that had aspirins in it, because once in a long while Daddy had a headache and would grab a couple of pills. I found the tin and lifted its lid. There were about half a dozen aspirin left, which I threw in the trash.

I put J’s Band-Aid inside and was just snapping the lid shut when he asked, “What’s this?”

I turned around and J had come up the stairs and was looking at my map on Old Man Porter’s desk, the one I’d made to keep track of where I’d looked for Freedom Church. Normally I wouldn’t share anything with J, mostly on account of he has a big mouth. But I figured it was up to me to teach him about real life, since Daddy wasn’t around. So I told him that I was looking around the Dunlops’ property for where Freedom Church used to be, and I showed him which part of the map was ours, which was the Dunlops’, and which was Miss Georgia’s.

I handed him the little tin with his Band-Aid in it.

He shoved it deep in the pocket of his shorts. “How come Miss Georgia’s part is so small?”

“Because a long time ago Mr Dunlop’s great-grandaddy stole some of her land.”

“How?”

“He shot Miss Georgia’s grandaddy in the back when he was walking into church and took it from him.”

J’s dark eyes flared at me. “No! No way!”

I nodded. “That’s why we don’t get along with Mr Dunlop.”

“Oh,” he said, turning back to stare at the map. “I thought it was because he’s an asshole.”

He said it so seriously, I busted out laughing.

“Well, he is!” J protested.

I couldn’t stop laughing, which started J laughing, too, and we made our way back to the house, weaving across the gravel, hanging onto each other just to stay up.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Mama

Even if Mr Dunlop never gave back the land he stole from Miss Georgia’s family, I still felt like I had to find that Freedom Church. For her. For Daddy. For me. If J could hang on to an old Band-Aid for months like it was something holy, I ought to be able to find the church. On Sunday I got a shovel from the shop because I figured it was time to start digging for that thing. In a hundred years, the rock they used as an altar must’ve gotten covered up with dirt or bushes or something. It sure wasn’t in plain sight.

I wished for about the hundredth time that me and Thomas were friends. He’d probably have some good ideas about where to find the altar stone. Plus, I kind of wanted him to know that I was trying to do something good, to unbury the past and find the land that belonged to black people since long ago. I dug hard and long in the woods, everywhere there was a hump that might be covering a rock that was supposedly so huge you couldn’t miss it. I didn’t find a thing.

When it got so dark I couldn’t tell the difference between dirt, rocks, and leaves, I dragged my shovel home. Beau was sitting on the front steps of the What-U-Want, even though it was closed, tugging his hair.

“What’s wrong, Beau?” I put the tools on the porch and sat down next to him.

“It’s the strangest thing, Red.”

“What?”

“Your mama. I wanted to work on a couple of oil changes, but she’s all dressed up and she said she wants to be all alone in the shop.”

“The shop?” I stood up. What was she doing in there? Packing?

“See, ain’t that strange?”

I flew across the gravel, even though Beau was calling out to me about how Mama wanted to be alone, and I burst into the shop like a hurricane.

It was so cold in the shop that I could see my breath and dark enough that Mama looked like a ghost standing at the top of the stairs in the office. Slowly she turned and I saw her face all puffy and red and streaked with tears. I’d never seen Mama in the middle of crying before. When she saw me she whipped her head back around to face the wall.

I saw what she was staring at. The wedding photo. I walked up the stairs and looked at it, too. Mama and Daddy looked so happy and real young. Then I noticed the frame. It was one of those that had the wedding date on it,
OCTOBER 22, 1958
. October 22? Today!

I stood there staring at the picture now, too, remembering how they always went somewhere special on their anniversary every year. They closed up shop for the day and didn’t get home until real late. It was after midnight, last year, which was the first year they left me in charge, since I was eleven. I know because I woke up and couldn’t believe it was so late. I even went out and asked them where they’d been and why they came back so late. They said I made them feel like a couple of teenagers being grilled by their daddy, and they stood there giggling like a couple of teenagers, too.

Thinking of Mama giggling made it hard to listen to her sniffling and gulping.

When she turned around again she whispered, “I really miss him.”

My voice was quiet, too. “Then why do you want to move and leave him behind?”

She looked at the photo and spun her wedding ring around and around her finger. “Because if I can’t have him any more I don’t want to have pieces of him all around me.” She took a step back from the picture. “If I can’t hear his voice I don’t want to hear him everywhere I go.” She turned away from the wall. “If I can’t see him I don’t want to look at everything that was his.” She wiped the tears from her eyes.

That’s when I realized that me and Mama had opposite ways of grieving. She loved Daddy so much that, without him, she was like the shell of a snail that’d lost its living-inside part. Like a shell you’d put on your nightstand, sitting there doing nothing until it got covered with gum wrappers and a busted whistle and the baseball cards that aren’t worth putting in the album, and your mama would come in your room and say, “Boys. I just don’t understand them,” and throw it all out, even the shell. Unless she was one of those mamas who’d turned into a shell herself and given up on cleaning and cooking and just about everything else. For Mama it hurt too much to be reminded of him. For me it hurt too much not to have everything of Daddy all around me.