The Between (5 page)

“What happened?” Kaya asked, breathless, skating behind them.

“Jamil saw some kids kill a duckling. The poor thing. And that’s a felony in this state,” Dede said.

Kaya bent down to take a look under the bench. “Gross,” she said.

Jamil’s eyes suddenly narrowed as he gazed back at the park, and he pulled from Dede’s grip to launch himself back onto the path. His legs pumped with speed and determination.

“Where’s he going?” Dede asked.

“Maybe to those boys over there,” Kaya said.

Fifty yards out, Hilton saw four boys ambling down the path away from them with a basketball. Two were white, two were black, and they looked tall from where Hilton stood. All but one were bare-chested, wearing cutoff shorts that reached their knees. Jamil pitched toward them and skidded to a stop after circling in front of them. Startled, the bigger boys stopped walking.

“Hil. . . I don’t like this,” Dede said.

“Stay here,” Hilton said. “Those boys aren’t little.”

As Hilton neared him, he heard his son confronting the preteens, telling them the duck was dead and they had no right to do that. What gave them the right to do that? His voice was clear and resolved in a way Hilton had never heard. Fearless, even.

“Yo, man, I didn’t kill no duck,” the tallest black boy said, pointing to a wispy-haired blond boy. “You talk to this crazy motherfucker about that shit, all right?”

The blond boy took a step toward Jamil and cocked his fist back in a threat. “Faggot, I’ll kick your little ass. Get out of my face.”

“Oh, no. There won’t be any of that,” Hilton announced, and four surprised faces looked up at him. One of the boys, sensing trouble, began to walk away and bounced the basketball unhurriedly as he walked. The rest stepped away from Hilton and assessed him. Hilton’s stance was threatening, shoulders forward, the way he’d learned from the teenagers he once counseled—boys who were old beyond their years. Hilton’s frame was slight, but he was six-two and could make his eyes look menacing. Diplomacy, on the streets, was the last resort.

“Man, you’d better check this little shrimp,” the blond boy told Hilton. “He came over here talking shit.”

“In the first place,” Hilton said, “you shut that filthy mouth in front of me. And the second thing is, if I ever see any of you killing animals in this park or anywhere, I’ll call the police. How would you like it if somebody broke your little necks just because they felt like it? And believe me, somebody could.”

“I didn’t kill nothin’,” the tall black boy protested.

“You just remember what I said. And if you think this is a joke, just try me. Just try me one time.”

Hilton still had the touch. The boys grumbled sullenly, but none had the nerve to look Hilton in the eye or to make a move to walk away until he backed up a step.

“Come on, Jamil,” Hilton said.

Hilton heard catcalls as he and Jamil made their way back toward the bay, but nonetheless he felt good. Angry and frustrated, but good. Jamil’s confrontation with those boys had been impulsive and dangerous—especially since one of them might have been armed—and he would have to tell Jamil that one day. One day. For now, he said, “That took guts, little man. I’m proud of what you did, standing up like that.”

Jamil smiled, but the smile faded quickly. He had been disturbed by what he’d seen, and he was silent as he and Kaya unlaced their skates and the family packed Dede’s Audi to go home. The sun was still blazing white high above the horizon, but the day didn’t seem so nice anymore and there was no reason to stay. Yes, Hilton reminded himself, he’d known since that morning that unpleasantness was waiting. Jamil had seen violence, death, lack of remorse. Big lessons for a third-grader.

“So I guess Dad really told those boys off, huh?” Kaya asked Jamil in the backseat, clicking on her seat belt as Hilton started the engine. There would be no teasing, no fighting for space between them today. “At least the other ducks will be okay.”

“Hil, let’s stop at Dairy Queen on the way home,” Dede said. With the radio on as he turned onto South Dixie Highway to head south, Hilton heard the day’s first bit of good news: near the end of the first half, the Dolphins were already ahead by fourteen points, thanks to two Marino touchdowns. Colts, zero.

“See? The Dolphins are winning, Jamil,” he heard Kaya saying.

Traffic on the three-lane highway was clogged for a Sunday, and Sunday drivers were the worst because they all drove like they were sightseeing or looking for somewhere to have dinner after church. Hilton pulled behind a black hearse in the center lane to try to move faster, but he regretted the move almost immediately. He couldn’t see past the hulking vehicle, and this lane was as slow as the last. In fact, the hearse seemed to have slowed purposely. Staring at the white curtains tied neatly in the hearses back windows, Hilton drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and fought not to curse. He hated traffic, especially at a crawl.

“My drama workshop is going to do a musical,” Kaya announced, “and we’re going to put it on at a big theater downtown for all the schoolkids. And I’m going to play one of the leads.”

“Great. When is that?” Dede said.

Hilton, seeing an opportunity as a red Honda Civic sped past and cleared the fast lane, tried to dart around to the left of the hearse. No luck. The hearse’s blinker came on with slow, deliberate flashes, and the vehicle wandered left in front of him, still leading. “Dammit,” Hilton whispered. The hearse was hideous to him, an older model with its black paint faded and bubbled from years under the sunlight. It looked as if it could be from the 1960s, and it probably had no business still puttering around.

“Will you stay in one lane?” Dede said.

“I can’t see past this thing. I hate that.”

“You’re already doing the speed limit. Stop tailgating.”

Three things happened simultaneously: the radio erupted with cheers as a Dolphins defender picked off a Colts pass bound for the end zone, Jamil laughed because of something Kaya whispered in his ear, and an irate driver somewhere to the right of their car bore down hard on his horn and sustained it until Hilton and Dede turned their heads to see what the commotion was. These things happened in the space of less than two seconds, and Hilton allowed the road to escape his eyes for less time than that.

“Dad,
watch out.”

Instinctively, Hilton planted his foot on the brake. As the car fought to stop, he saw the hearse’s rear bearing down on them. He jammed harder on the brake, and the tires screamed and the car began to skid before bucking to a stop.

The jolt threw his family’s weight against their seat belts, their arms reaching for anything they could grab, and rapped the top of Hilton’s head against the windshield with a loud
thunk
before he was thrown back against his leather seat,
nana won’t leave you

stop running, hilton

is he breathing? lord have mercy

For a moment, sitting inside of the car reeled to a stop on South Dixie Highway, Hilton was aware of everything and nothing. Orange and black shapes danced before his eyes against the sunlight, and his ears were plugged against what sounded vaguely like faraway men’s and women’s voices. He thought he smelled salty air. Then he smelled the pungence of charred rubber and saw cotton-thin wisps of white smoke rising from his front tires. Everything looked familiar, like something he had known once, but it all felt different. Where was he?

Then he heard the halting voices of his wife, his daughter, and his son, in that order. The radio said the interception was no good because someone was offside, and Dolphins fans were booing. And the thought came, as though it were miraculous: I’m in my car.

Hilton’s eyes were riveted to the hearse’s back curtains directly ahead of him, the only clear reality. The fabric wasn’t white at all, he could see now. The curtains were cut from a faded pattern that might have been pretty once, and they were held in perfectly pleated canopies across the windows by ribbons of a matching pattern. While Hilton studied them, a pale hand appeared in the left window and pulled a curtain away to expose darkness inside. No light was penetrating, it seemed. Then, as distinctly as if the layers of glass from his windshield and the hearse’s back window had vanished, a man’s head appeared from behind the curtain. He was wearing dark glasses and a black cap, and his face was wan and appeared impatient. He could be any age. The dark glasses stared back at Hilton for what seemed like a long time. Hilton felt beads of perspiration forming at his armpits and his testicles. He thought the man might smile at him, and his stomach curdled as though he would be sick.

how many times

“Hil, are you all right, baby?” Dede asked, her voice in near-panic because she had asked more than once. She touched his cheek.

do you think you can die?

The face in the window was gone, and the hearse’s back curtains were drawn. Hilton tried to blink away the electrified shapes tumbling through his vision. He suddenly realized he had a dizzying headache, and he touched the top of his head to see if he was bleeding from the bump.

“I’m fine,” he said quickly. Hilton glanced in his rearview mirror at Kaya and Jamil, who were both wide-eyed but didn’t seem badly shaken. “The flight crew’s okay?”

“A-okay,” Jamil said, giving him a thumbs-up.

“Dad, they said in my science class you could have flown through the windshield at forty miles per hour even though the car stopped. Did you know that? A projectile traveling at—”

“Hush, Kaya,” Dede said.

Hilton’s vision cleared. He snapped the radio off and grasped the steering wheel firmly, replaying the near-crash in his mind. The hearse had stopped at a red light, that was all. He’d looked away from the road. He was lucky no one was hurt. He still felt sick to his stomach. Nerves. Nerves were jumping all around the car. Hilton took a deep breath and attempted a laugh. “Sorry about that,” he said.

The hearse began to move. Slowly, cautiously, Hilton raised his foot from the brake and began to follow, straightening the car. As soon as he had a chance, he would change lanes. He didn’t want to stare at those curtains and the silent, shadowy man inside.

“Fasten your seat belt,” Dede said. “You want to get killed?”

The day, as Hilton had known since that morning, was a complete loss, and his headache was worse. Dede examined his head once they were home and suggested he visit a doctor the next day, but he said he was fine. While Dede began to brown some ground beef for dinner, he overheard Kaya talking to a friend on the kitchen phone: “. . . and then the car stopped just like that,
errrrrrrggghh,
and Dad bumped his head on the windshield.” Jamil was in the living room, leaning across the sofa to stick his finger inside the birdcage so Abbott and Costello could peck seed from his fingertip. He was lost in an eight-year-old’s thoughts. Hilton wanted to say something to him, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t have the energy, not tonight.

And the Dolphins let him down, Hilton found out when he turned on the radio on the living room stereo to hear the final score. The Colts had turned the game around to win, the announcer said, with a final score of 28-13. Twenty-eight to thirteen. It couldn’t be. Before downing three Extra-Strength Tylenol and going to bed before dark because of his headache, Hilton called the sports line to check the score again: 28-13. So not only were the Dolphins sorry enough to lose to the Colts at home, they somehow managed to lose their fourteenth point too.

Hilton lay alone in the fading sunlight and tossed fitfully under the sheets for nearly twenty minutes before he could sleep.

The loose gravel crunching beneath his shoes on the unpaved road sounds like finely crushed bones. He walks through a wall of light until he sees the slanted roof of the wooden house, the porch wrapped in vines, two front windows adorned with red sheer curtains. No one is waiting beyond the curtains. He walks past a crippled red wagon to climb the wooden steps, which shudder slightly beneath his weight. The door hangs ajar from a twisted, rusty hinge. Inside, he sees all the things he knows; the old green couch covered with an afghan to hide the threadbare upholstery, mason jars filled with summer flowers, a small wooden table for two polished to a shine behind the couch, the portrait of the white Jesus with cascades of flaxen hair on the wall. He likes this room, but he cannot stay here. He can smell supper burning, and he sees a thin cloud of greasy smoke floating above him. He must go to the kitchen.

He sees a heap of women’s clothes on the kitchen floor, with a bulky shape unmoving beneath the tangle of skirts, dresses, and shawls. He kneels and pulls the clothing aside, one article after the other, to disinter whatever lies there. He knows this dress with the interwoven daisies, this white lace shawl, this purple head wrap, this long calico skirt. He lifts the skirt to his face, and he smells talcum powder, bleach, a hint of a lemon fragrance. More hurried now, he casts the clothes aside until the heap shrinks to nearly nothing.

Then he uncovers her face, fat-cheeked and calm, her crown of Seminole-touched gray hair in limp strands across her forehead, eyes closed, lips drawn. She is sleeping. He shakes the heap to try to wake her, but she does not move. He throws the remaining clothes aside and reaches for her arm, but he finds only dry bones that come apart at the joints at his touch. The sleeping head is attached to a pile of dirty, brittle bones collected inside a flowered dress. The head’s eyes fly open, and there is nothing inside the eye sockets except holes where he can see through to the back of her skull and its crisscrossing cracks.

He has never run so fast. He flies through the kitchen, past the couch, down the porch steps and stumbles to the unpaved path lined with identical houses as far as he can see in either direction. He bounds up the steps to the porch next door. He should be able to get inside here, but he cannot. He shakes the doorknob, but it is sturdy. He bangs on the door and shouts for someone to let him in. No one comes. He runs to the house across the street and finds the door locked again, and no one answers his cries. The same obstacle waits at house after house stretching down the road. He checks his pockets for keys because he knows he should be able to open these doors, all of them, but his keys are gone. How will he get back home? How will he find the right house? Why will no one let him in?