South of Broad (6 page)

“An emphatic no, Mr. Rutledge,” Mother said. “I think you’re as wrong as a parent can be.”

“Ah, Dr. King, again, that note of condescension. Grating and irritating at best. Infuriating at worst,” Worth Rutledge said, shooting my mother a look that could have removed acid from a car’s battery. “Let’s just examine the facts: our two kids get caught with a couple of grams of cocaine. Granted, they did wrong. But we’ve got this principal who’s raised a son who was once caught at a party with a half pound of cocaine. He’s been part of the Charleston Juvenile Court system ever since.”

“I was told we were coming here to talk about helping your son and Molly out of a bad situation,” my father said, his innate gentility girded with body armor. “I didn’t know you’d be conducting a seminar on my son’s past.”

In the sudden airlessness of the room, I kept my head down and my eyes fixed on the plate in front of me. The level of discomfort reached a boiling point. Then Molly’s father coughed, but words failed him at this essential moment.

“I think what my daddy’s saying is that Molly and I are amateurs compared to Leo here,” the younger Chadworth said.

I burned with discomfort, but I knew that the willful contentiousness of Chad Rutledge would earn a measured but fiery response from one of my parents, if not both.

However, it was Fraser Rutledge, the great Ashley Hall basketball player, who broke out of a cocoon of shyness and said, “Shut up, Daddy. Shut up, Chad. You’re only making it worse, and you’re making it much worse for Molly.”

“Don’t you dare talk to your father like that, young lady,” Hess Rutledge snarled through thin lips.

Posey Huger added, “He can’t make it much worse for Molly. She’s restricted for the rest of the summer.”

“That so?” Mr. Rutledge asked. “Funny thing, I’m sure my son told me that he and Molly were going to a dance at the Folly Beach pier next weekend. Didn’t you mention that, son?”

“My daddy was never one to keep a secret,” Chad said, winking at the entire table and somehow coming across as a charming rascal rather than the darker creature that I felt staring me down every time he looked my way. His courtliness was the flip side of his aggression. It might not have been pretty, but it was masculine and, I thought, Charlestonian to the core.

“You’re not going anywhere next Friday,” Hess said to her son, evidently realizing what a spoiled figure he was cutting for my silent but appraising mother.

“Ah, Mama,” Chad replied, “I was even thinking about getting my sister—old Muscle Beach down there—a blind date for the dance.”

Fraser stood up with quiet dignity and excused herself to the ladies’ room. The suffering of plain girls who were born with a duty to be beautiful to rich and shallow families was almost unbearable to me. I nearly rose to follow her, then thought I would look strange in a ladies’ room. But Molly Huger did rise abruptly. Molly excused herself, shot her boyfriend a murderous look, then followed her friend out of the dining room. In her own beauty and straight-backed carriage, Molly had fulfilled the most pressing and necessary duties for a Charleston girl of her generation. For the rest of her life, she could sit around being beautiful, marrying Chadworth the tenth and bearing his heirs, rising to the presidency of the Junior League, and putting fresh flowers on the altar of St. Michael’s. With thoughtless ease she could throw parties for her husband’s law firm, sit on the board of the Dock Street Theatre, and restore a mansion south of Broad. I could write out Molly’s entire history as she passed in hot pursuit of her bruised friend. Because she was pretty, there was nothing about Molly that was not a cliché to me. But I had no idea how history was about to manhandle Fraser, a girl with a man’s shoulders, a twenty-rebound game on her résumé, and a future that contained uncertainty and, I was certain, great sorrow. In a flash, it bothered me that I was much more attracted to Molly than to Fraser.

“You shouldn’t say things like that to your sister, Chad,” Simmons Huger said, a gesture that seemed correct and timely. “You’ll regret it when she’s older.” Fraser’s mother followed the two girls.

“I was just teasing, Mr. Huger,” said a contrite Chadworth the tenth. “She’s never had much of a sense of humor.”

“She’s a sensitive girl,” Mr. Huger agreed, then turned to my parents. “Dr. King? Mr. King? Thank you for your time and for the help you’re giving Molly. I’m going to be late for an appointment if I don’t get going.”

“Certainly,” my father said. “We’ll let you know what’s been decided.”

“Thanks for arranging this, Worth,” Mr. Huger said. “And thanks for springing for lunch.”

No one had noticed my mother’s tundralike silence as this small-time passion play between troubled families unfurled around her. It was a huge tactical error for Worth Rutledge to bring up my drug connection to defend the actions of his own son, but Mr. Rutledge was a well-known litigator in Charleston, which made him eager to engage whenever he smelled blood in the water.

Mrs. Rutledge and the two girls entered the dining room again. I followed my father’s lead in rising from our chairs until the ladies were seated, their chairs held by white-jacketed waiters who hurried from the corners of the room.

“Ah!” Chadworth senior said. “The return of the natives.” Looking to my mother for approval, he added, “That was a literary reference in honor of you, Dr. King. Hardy, I believe. What was his first name?”

“Thomas,” Mother said.

“I understand from my research that you did your doctoral dissertation on James Joyce.
The Odyssey
, or something like that. Correct?”

“Something like that,” she said.

“Fraser has something to say to everyone at the table,” Mrs. Rutledge announced.

Fraser, red-eyed, began to speak. “I’m so sorry I caused a scene, and I want to apologize to my daddy and brother for embarrassing them in public. You both know how much I love you.”

“Sure thing, sugar. The whole family’s been under a lot of pressure,” her father said.

My mother pulled out of her long period of near-silence and said, “Miss Rutledge, I’ve been noticing you with great interest today at lunch. It’s my conclusion that you’re a young woman of much character.”

Fraser glanced around the table, her eyes glistening. “But I didn’t mean to ruin the lunch. I had no right to speak.”

“You had every right to speak,” Mother said. “You are a woman of parts.”

The silence of bivalves gripped the table until young Chad made a serious error by following my mother’s praise of his sister with the most untimely joke. “Yeah. Big parts. Real big parts: big shoulders, big thighs, big feet.”

“Hush up, young man,” Mother said, rising out of her seat. “Just hush your mouth.”

“Don’t you ever talk to my son like that again, Dr. King,” an enraged Worth Rutledge snarled. “Or you’re going to find yourself looking at want ads.”

“He’s enrolled in my school,” Mother flashed back. “If the superintendent doesn’t like how I’m doing my job, then he can let me know about it.”

“If you want to come back to my office after lunch, Dr. King, we’ll put in a call to your superintendent,” Rutledge said.

“The business of education at Peninsula High is conducted from
my
office, Mr. Rutledge,” Mother said. “You’re welcome to visit me there. Please set up an appointment with my secretary.”

If the setting had been anywhere but the Charleston Yacht Club, with the sunlight shining on bone china and silver cutlery, I think Worth Rutledge might have exploded. Social forces I was only dimly aware of had brought anarchy upon that sedate luncheon which had begun as a function of bureaucracy, courtesy, and goodwill.

Across from me, a shell-shocked Molly Huger was staring at me.

“Ever had so much fun, Molly?” I asked. To my complete surprise, the whole table laughed, except for Chad, whose face was stony at the general loosening of the ghastly atmosphere. In the privileged world of young Chadworth Rutledge, when he chose to be the comedian, boys like me were born to be the audience. When Chad chose to be serious, my role was to play the admiring fool. When Chad declared a pronouncement, I was to be a midnight rider, delivering the message to the countryside. But that would be years in the learning.

My mother took her seat and the gathering grew cordial and pragmatic again. Lunch came to a swift conclusion over coffee and pecan pie. In parting, the gentility that is both the bedrock and the quicksand of all social endeavors in Charleston brought grace and quietude to the last act of that meal. There were handshakes all around, but no love lost among any of the major participants.

My parents and I made our farewells. We walked out of the Charleston Yacht Club, and the great heat met us at the doorway. Uncharacteristically, my mother kissed me on the cheek, and the three of us walked together toward East Bay Street and our city of many mansions, away from the yacht club that we would never be invited to join.

•   •   •

M
y meeting with Coach Anthony Jefferson awaited. I entered the gymnasium, which smelled like mildew and boy sweat and the stale air of inflated pigskins and basketballs. Through the office windows, I saw the coach studying a thick manila envelope that I knew was my file. He was obviously concentrating, and three uneven lines of wrinkles creased his forehead as he familiarized himself with the downs and then the deeper downs of my life. By my junior year, I thought I had turned myself into a reasonable model citizen of Peninsula High, but even I was aware that the bar I had set for myself was a low one.

Coach Jefferson’s face was coffee-colored; there was gray in his sideburns, but his eyes were an impenetrable mahogany. He froze me in mid-step as I entered his office. He had been a star halfback for South Carolina State in the early fifties and was one of the first inductees into that black college’s athletic hall of fame.

“I guess you’re Leo King.” His voice was softer than I expected.

“Yes, sir, I am. My mother sent me down here.”

His eyes moved back to my record. “You were arrested for having a half pound of cocaine in your possession.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“So you’re not denying it?”

“They caught me fair and square,” I admitted. “It was my first party ever at a house south of Broad.”

“But someone put it in your pocket so they wouldn’t get caught. And you refused to divulge that person’s name. Is that the story?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t you think society depends on people like you—innocent people like you—cooperating with the police, Leo?” he asked. “Was this boy a friend of yours?”

“No, sir. I’d never spoken to him,” I said.

“Then why not turn him in?” the coach asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I admired him a great deal, sir.”

“Did you tell the cops that?”

“No, sir, I didn’t tell them anything about him. I didn’t even tell them it was a guy.”

“You told nobody this boy’s name? Not your mother or your father, no friend, no shrink, no priest, no social worker? Why would you take the rap for some scumbag who set you up?”

“I made a decision. Spur-of-the-moment kind. And I stuck with it,” I explained. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t look like much of a player, King.”

“It’s my glasses, sir. They make me look weak.”

“Do you wear them during games?”

“Yes, sir, or I couldn’t see any of the other team. I’m blind as a bat.”

“And you catch for the baseball team?” the coach asked. “Catchers are hard to come by.”

“My father was a catcher for The Citadel. Since I was a little kid, he’s taught me how to be in charge of a game.”

“Yet you haven’t played much baseball, have you?” he asked.

“I had some mental problems when I was younger, Coach Jefferson. They don’t have baseball teams in mental hospitals. But I played a lot of pickup games with the orderlies and the janitors, and some guards always played too. They taught me some good stuff.”

Coach Jefferson studied me as though he was trying to comprehend our go-around, taking my measure. I had never known a good coach who could not render himself unreadable. His face was blank; his rapt absorption unnerved me because he made it seem like a form of prayer.

“Leo,” he said finally, “let’s try to cut a deal between us. I think I’m going to need you this year a lot more than you need me. I’ve already had six white boys pull out of this school because they won’t be coached by a nigger. You hear that?”

“Yes, sir,” I admitted. “Some called me. They wanted me to go with them.”

“This is going to be a volatile year. We could have everything from race riots to firebombs. And I need a white kid on the team I can trust.”

“There are some nice guys already here, Coach Jefferson. It might be hard at first, but they’ll get to like you.”

He said, “I’d like for you to prove I can trust you. I need to know I can count on you through thick and thin.”

“How can I prove that?”

Rising from his chair, Coach Jefferson walked out of his office and surveyed the gym. When he was assured the gym was empty, he returned to his small office, folded his powerful hands, and leaned across the table. “I’d like you to tell me the name of the boy who put the cocaine in your sports coat, Leo.” I flinched, but his raised hand calmed me as his voice continued. “You give me that, and I give you something back.”

“What can you possibly give me for that?” I asked. “I made a promise to myself that I would never tell anyone that kid’s name.”

“I admire you for keeping that promise. It’s why I trust you,” Coach Jefferson said. “But I want the boy’s name and the reasons you kept quiet. Here’s what I give you back: I’ll never tell another living soul what that boy’s name is. Not one—not my wife, not my daddy, not my preacher man, not even Jesus if he appears to me on a white cloud. And I’ll never mention it to you again. It’ll be like we never had this discussion.”

“How do I know if I can trust you?”

“You don’t, Leo. You got to look at me. Study me, and come to some decision about me. Is this a man I want to charge the sniper’s nest with, or a Judas who will sell his soul for thirty pieces of silver? Or is this a Simon who will help Jesus carry the cross up to Calvary? You got to make a decision about me, Leo. And you got to do it fast.”