Stumptown Kid (10 page)

“Let’s get out of here and not bother ’em,” Luther said.

“Good idea,” I said quickly. I’m not much for wasps or hornets.

We kept walking. “Say, you wanna visit your old camp at the river for a while?” I asked. We still had some time before dark, so I knew Mom wouldn’t start to worry yet.

“Okay,” Luther said.

People we’d pass would look at us, then put their heads together and talk some more and look again. If I knew them, I’d wave. Otherwise I ignored them.

One man waved and called out, “Hi, Charlie. Hi, Luther.”

“You’re making us both famous in Holden,” I murmured to Luther as I waved back. “I don’t even know who that is.”

We turned down Broom Street.

“Luther,” I said, “what would you do if you couldn’t stand the man your mom was seein’?”

Luther glanced over at me. “You talkin’ about Vern?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t like him at all.”

“Your mama must see something she likes about him,” Luther said.

“She says she might marry him if he asks her.”

“And you don’t want Vern to be your daddy.”

I scowled. “Makes me mad just thinkin’ about it. Even if Vern marries Mom, he won’t ever be my dad.” Luther nodded and put his hand on the top of my head for a second. “I guess you gotta try and get along with him for your mama.”

That surprised me. He’d seen the ugliest part of Vern. How could I get along with someone like that?

We didn’t say any more till we got to the river.

Luther’s lean-to was still there at the camp. We went down to the edge of the river.

I picked up a stone and tossed it sideways. It bounced across the surface of the water, making a soft slapping sound and then disappearing like an otter diving for fish.

“Four times,” I said.

Luther grinned. “That’s pretty good. It’ll strengthen your pitching arm. Let me try with my left arm.” He walked along the bank and found a good, flat rock. He tossed it, and it skipped over the water five times.

“How many skips could you get with your good arm?” I asked him.

“My record was seven,” Luther said.

“Once my dad and I were going fishing at Lake McBride and he skipped one
eight
times.”

“That’s real good,” Luther said.

He leaned over and picked through some rocks with the water lapping up over them.

“Whooee,” he called out. “Lots o’ crawdads here. Charlie, get the jar I left in the lean-to, will you?”

I ran to the lean-to and found the jar sitting on the tree stump.

I grabbed it and ran back to Luther. We put some water in the jar and plopped all the crawfish inside. There were six of them, wiggling their legs around like tiny lobsters.

“Good fishing bait,” Luther said, pulling the catfish line out of his pocket. He pulled a piece of cork off the hook, held up the fishing line, and grinned. “Always carry a fishing line with me. Learned that from my daddy. Never know when you’ll find a good fishing spot, eh, Charlie?”

“Yeah.”

The cork had a slit in it. Luther tied the line around it and through the slit, leaving about a foot of line between the cork and the hook.

“Cork makes a good bobber,” he said.

He stuck a crawdad on the hook and threw it into the water. He tied the other end of the line on a stick and poked it deep into the soft dirt next to the river.

He straightened up to look at his line. “That oughta do it,” he said.

“My birthday’s on the sixteenth,” I said.

“That a fact? How old you gonna be?”

“Twelve. Could you come and have supper with me and my mom?”

Luther looked at me. “You ask your mama if it’s all right with her?”

“Sure,” I said. “And Vern won’t be there.”

“Well then, I’d be honored, Charlie,” Luther said.

He folded his arms over his chest and gazed out at the cork bobber.

“Will you ever have to go back to Tennessee?” I asked him.

“Oh, I guess I’ll go back sometime,” he said. “I just gotta wait till everything cools down. Maybe till Ruckus Brody stops looking for me.”

“But what if he never stops looking?” I asked.

He stared across the water at the trees on the other side. “Well, I don’t know, Charlie,” he said slowly. “But I sure do miss my family.”

Inside my heart I could feel a dividing take place. I wanted Luther to be happy, and that meant he had to go back home to Tennessee. But if he left, I’d lose a good friend.

“I hope you stay in Holden for a long time,” I told him.

He smiled. “It’s nice havin’ a friend here, Charlie,” he said.

“When you go back home, you gonna play baseball again?”

“Not if this arm don’t work,” he said. He walked to the big tree and sat under it.

I sat on the tree stump.

“Tell me some more about playing for the Memphis Mockingbirds,” I said.

He crossed one ankle over the other. “Well, they were good times, Charlie. It was hard work, though, and tiring. Lots o’ times we played doubleheaders. We’d take a bus to the game in the afternoon. Then we’d get back on the bus and ride to the next town for the second game. ’Course, we couldn’t stay in most hotels, so we—”

“How come you couldn’t stay in hotels?” I asked him.

“How come? ’Cause white folks didn’t want us there,” he said, like he was surprised I didn’t know.

“Oh.” I’d never heard of not letting people stay in hotels. “What’s the matter with people like that?”

“A lotta white folks is like that. So sometimes colored folks let us stay in their houses, sleepin’ on the floor when they didn’t have enough beds. And sometimes we slept in the bus. Coupla times we slept on the floor of a school for colored children. And we couldn’t eat in restaurants, neither, so we—”

“You mean white folks didn’t let you eat in the restaurants, either?” I could hardly believe it. “Do colored kids go to school with white kids?”

“Not in a lotta places,” Luther said.

“These white folks, they’re believers?” I asked.

“I s’pose some of ’em are,” Luther said. “But that don’t mean nothin’, Charlie, just because they believe in God. There’s white preachers who say the Bible tells ‘em not to like colored folks.”

“Well,” I said, “my dad told me God made everybody even, that nobody’s better than anybody else.”

“Your daddy was a good man, Charlie,” Luther said.

“Yeah. I miss him.”

“You keep your daddy here,” Luther said, touching his head. “And here.” He touched his chest. “And he’ll live on forever. You know?”

I nodded.

“You got a real good heart,” Luther said.

“You got a good heart, too, Luther,” I told him. He smiled.

Being with Luther felt good, like when Dad and I were doing stuff together. Sad feelings about Dad came and sat side by side in my chest along with the happy feelings about Luther. I couldn’t figure if I felt like laughing or crying.

So I got up and skipped some more stones across the water.

Luther and I stayed till the sun was nearly down. We didn’t catch a fish, but it didn’t matter. I don’t think Luther minded either. It was just good passing the time together down there by the river.

I kept thinking about one of my Superman comic books. A bad guy figured out how to stop time so he could do lots of crimes, and nobody could stop him because their time was frozen.

I wished I could make time stand still, too, as long as we could all move around. I wanted to go on forever with Luther teaching us about baseball and never have to play that game against Lobo and the Wildcats.

But the time was creeping closer. Every time I thought about it my body went crazy. My stomach flip-flopped, and I got shaky and started sweating. Especially when I heard some of Lobo’s friends say Lobo was bragging that he was going to pitch the game against us.

“Anyone can beat those girls,” he was saying all over town.

The day before my birthday, I saw Brad Lobo again. It was the first time since Luther had kept him from beating me up.

Mom and I were shopping at the A&P. I turned down the produce aisle and saw him coming in the door behind his dad and older brother. At first I froze. Then my hands got clammy and my body started to shake. I grabbed a bunch of carrots for Mom and hurried up the aisle, hoping he hadn’t see me.

But I guess nothing escapes the beady eyes of Brad Lobo. He followed me around to the aisle with the canned vegetables, then came up behind me and said in a low voice, “Hey, Stumptown. I see you don’t have your Negro pal to protect you now. Is that why you have him around? To fight your fights for you?”

I could feel my blood boiling in my ears. “Luther’s my friend,” I said.

Lobo seemed to see something behind me. He looked startled.

“Brad!” a big voice boomed from behind me. “Let’s get out of here. I’m in a hurry.”

It was Lobo’s dad.

Lobo’s face turned red. Then his big brother, who looked like him except bigger, came up behind me. I knew it was him because as he walked past Lobo, he gave him a shove. Lobo called his brother a dirty name, and his brother, who was about sixteen and maybe a hundred sixty pounds, turned and smacked Lobo across the face. The smack sent Lobo into a shelf of canned peas. Lobo slumped to the floor. A couple of cans fell off the shelf, just missing his head.

I hurried to the end of the aisle where their father stood, watching.

He swore loudly and said, “Get your butts over here or I’ll come and knock your heads together.”

Somehow I believed he’d do it, too. Right there in the canned goods aisle of the A&P.

I found Mom in the dairy section. “What was all that hollering about?” she asked.

“Oh, just a family havin’ a squabble,” I said, wishing my heart would calm down. “I think they left the store.”

I guess I knew then where all Lobo’s nastiness came from. Like a dog that’s treated bad and gets mean, Brad Lobo probably lived with yelling and smacks in the face all the time. But it didn’t make him seem less scary. In fact, I had a feeling I’d better make sure to stay out of Lobo’s sight. He was likely to be so embarrassed that I’d seen the way his family treated him, he’d beat me to a pulp next time he saw me.

* * *

The next day it was my birthday. Mom stayed home from work to bake my cake, and she made me leave the house for a few hours after lunch. When I got back, she told me my surprise was in her bedroom and she’d skin me alive if I went in there. So while Mom frosted my cake I sat in the living room and stared at the closed door to her bedroom.

Parents are good at torturing kids sometimes.

Luther came after work at a quarter past five. He handed me a brand-new baseball bat.

“Wow!
Luther, thanks!”

“I didn’t have wrapping paper for it, Charlie,” he said. “But happy birthday.”

Mom was impressed. “Luther, you didn’t need to get Charlie a present. You must have spent a whole day’s pay on it.”

Luther shrugged. “See, Charlie? It’s a Larry Doby bat.”

Larry Doby’s colored. He plays for Cleveland and boy, can he hit home runs. “This is the best present I ever got.” I ran my hand over the smooth, polished wood. “A Larry Doby bat. Thanks, Luther.”

Luther grinned. “Glad you like it.”

Mrs. Banks was sitting out back in her lawn chair, focusing her crabby eyes on Luther while he helped Mom grill the hamburgers. At first Mom said hello to her and seemed bothered that she was watching us. After about fifteen minutes Mom asked her if she’d like one of the burgers when they were done. Mrs. Banks just frowned and said, “No, thank you,” and turned her face away.

We ate inside so we could eat without being stared at.

It was good seeing Luther sitting across the table from me and Mom again.

“How’s your job going at Landen’s?” Mom asked him.

“Real good, ma’am, real good,” Luther said. He smiled and pulled a key out of his shirt pocket. “I got myself another job there. Mr. Landen’s payin’ me extra to keep the place clean. He gave me my own key today. Mrs. Hollingsworth always has supper ready at five-thirty, so I’ll go back at night after baseball practice to do the cleanin’.”

“That’s wonderful, Luther,” Mom said.

Luther told us a funny story about a lady who stood in line for ten minutes to sell her eggs and when she finally got up to the counter, she realized she’d left them at home.

“She was real embarrassed,” Luther said, laughing.

I watched him and Mom laughing and talking together. I couldn’t help wishing that if Dad didn’t come home, Luther could marry Mom and be my dad. If Luther was white, it could happen. I could see that she and him really liked each other. I wondered if it was bad to wish a colored person was white. It sure would’ve made things easier all the way around.

“And now for your present, Charlie,” Mom said after I’d blown out my candles and we’d stuffed ourselves with cake and ice cream. “Luther, I’m going to need your help. Will you come with me? Charlie, you sit in the living room.”

We got up from the table, and Luther followed her into her bedroom.

I stood and watched.

After about half a minute Mom and Luther made their way into the living room carrying something big and heavy between them. It was about as tall as my waist, in a heavy wooden cabinet.

I let out a whoop. “It’s a television set!”

I’d seen one in the window of Dewey’s Furniture, so I knew what it was. People liked to stand on the sidewalk in front of the store and watch the television even though they couldn’t hear it. When a ball game was on, there’d be a crowd four people deep watching it.

Mom and Luther set it down for a second. “The man who delivered it said all we have to do is plug it in and adjust the antenna,” Mom said. “He showed me how to do it. I hope I remember.”

“Here, I’ll help,” I said. “Where are we gonna put it?”

“Over there,” Mom said, nodding at the corner of the room.

We carried it over and set it down.

“Charlie,” Mom said, “your dad and I were saving for a television set when he died. I kept saving little by little and finally had enough. And, well, your birthday seemed like a good time to get it.”

“Thanks, Mom!” I said. “I never thought we’d have one.”

I only knew a few kids who had a television set, and none of them were good friends of mine. Most folks in Stumptown couldn’t afford one. I couldn’t believe Mom really bought it for us.

“Here’s where you turn it on,” she said.

She twisted the knob. First came a sizzling sound, then voices.

A dot of light in the middle of the screen grew bigger and bigger and became a black-and-white picture. A funny-looking man with a bushy mustache and glasses and wearing a bow tie stood there looking out at a laughing audience we couldn’t see.

He held up a cigar he was smoking and asked, “Who was the second president of the United States?”

“That’s Groucho Marx,” Mom said.

“The second president?” I asked. “I never heard of him.”

Mom laughed. “No. That man on TV is Groucho Marx.” Her smile faded a little. “When I was little I loved the movies he made with his crazy brothers.”

I guess they were playing a game on TV. A man and a lady had to answer the questions Groucho asked them.

Mom couldn’t take her eyes away from the picture.

“Isn’t it amazing?” she said. “These people are maybe 2,000 miles away in California, and we’re watching them right here in Holden, Iowa.”

Luther shook his head. “Can’t hardly imagine it.”

Mom and I sat back on the davenport and Luther took the rocking chair. We watched for nearly an hour.

After that show we watched a program on a different channel. It was a story, like a movie. I heard crunching gravel outside. I leaned to the side to look out the window.

“Mom,” I said, my pulse suddenly charging, “didn’t you tell Vern not to come tonight?”

“Oh no,” she said, getting up to look out the window. “I told him we’d celebrate
tomorrow
night.”

“I have to leave, anyway,” Luther said. He sprang to his feet. “Thank you, Mrs. Neb—”

“No!”
I shouted so loud Mom and Luther stopped and looked at me. “This is
my
birthday, and this is
our
house, Mom. Don’t let Vern chase Luther off. It isn’t fair!”

“Oh no, Charlie,” Luther said. “I really do have to be goin’.”

Mom stared at me a second. “No, you’re right, Charlie. This has been a nice night. Luther, you just sit down again. Besides, this television show isn’t over yet.”

Luther’s mouth got tight, and he sat back down in the rocking chair. He looked miserable. I felt bad for making him stay to make a point with Vern, but I was sick of Vern telling us what was what.

Mom went to the door. “Vern,” she said, “this is a nice surprise, but like I told you, Charlie wanted to have one of his friends spend the evening on his birthday.”

Vern yanked the door open, stalked into the living room, and stopped in front of Luther.

His voice was low and calm, but his face was red. “I thought this might be the friend Charlie invited.”

“Go home, Vern,” I said.

“Charlie, keep quiet,” Mom said. “Vern, please. This is Charlie’s birthday. Let’s not spoil the day.”

“Mary, I’m askin’ you nice to tell this … fella … to go home now,” Vern said. “We need to talk.”

“No, Vern,” Mom said. She went over and put a hand on Vern’s arm. “I won’t do that. We can talk later. Luther is Charlie’s friend, and … he’s my friend, too.”

Vern’s mouth dropped open.

“I think you better leave now, Vern,” Mom said.

“I
better leave?” Vern hollered. “Mary, I swear, if I walk out that door now, I’m not coming back.”

“Go, Vern,” I said.

“Charlie, you hush up!” Mom cried.

Vern turned and stomped across the living room and out the door. Mom, Luther, and I froze like statues while his car roared to life, crunched back out of the driveway, and took off down the street.

“Well.” Mom was the first of us to come to life. Her voice was trembling. “I’m sorry that happened. Real sorry. Excuse me.”

She blinked a few times, then went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Luther stood up, his face sad. “I gotta go, Charlie. It was a nice party. You tell your mama I said thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Luther,” I said. “I hope he never comes back. Ever.”

Luther patted my shoulder and left.

I sat in the living room and stared at Mom’s bedroom door, with a dull ache throbbing in my chest.

* * *

I sat in front of the television set for an hour, looking at the screen but not really seeing it. All I could think of was how upset Mom was and how sad Luther was and how Vern had ruined my birthday.

I missed Dad so bad. Everything had been all mixed up since he left for the war.

Vern had made Mom happy again. But now she was back in her bedroom with the door shut, like two years ago. And it was all my fault.

No, it wasn’t. It was
Vern’s
fault. He shouldn’t have come tonight when he wasn’t invited. He’s prejudiced and mean, and he wrecked my birthday.

When Mom finally came out, her eyes were red and swelled up, and her hair was messy.

“Charlie, honey, I’m sorry about what happened,” she said, touching her hair. She smiled a little. “It was a nice celebration till the end, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

She sat on the davenport and put her arm around me. I leaned my head on her shoulder.

“I just need some time to adjust a little,” she said. “Seems like things happen sometimes, and we’ve got to get ourselves back on our feet before we can move again.”

I squeezed her hand. She sniffled a few times and said in a soft voice, “I sure do miss your dad.”

The audience on the TV was laughing, but Mom and I just sat there and stared at the screen.