The Planet of Junior Brown (15 page)

“Buddy? Junior?”

“We're here,” Buddy said, whispering. “Where you been? What's happening? I got to talk to you.”

“Did you get caught?” Mr. Pool asked them. He skirted the darkened planets—gently touching them as he headed toward the sound of Buddy.

“They caught us,” Buddy told him. “They going to have Junior tell his mother to come down here tomorrow morning, but you know he can't. I'm supposed to bring this cat I work for, who I'm supposed to be living with and who's supposed to be my uncle. Only I don't live with him and he ain't my uncle.”

“I got caught too,” Mr. Pool said.

“We saw it happen,” Buddy told him. “What all the man say to you?”

“Nothing he can prove,” Mr. Pool told him. “Just say he can never find me, which is a fact. But I do my work. I do my job. Trouble is, they want me to do the whole job and when they say to do it.”

Junior listened to Mr. Pool. Comfortable in the dark, he felt warm.

“All right now,” Mr. Pool said. He turned on the juice of the solar system so they could have some light. At once the room was transformed, for Junior especially, into deep space and glowing, revolving spheres.

“Oh, that's so pretty,” Junior said. “It's the first time I been here when you turn it on.”

“Yes, it's pretty,” Mr. Pool said. “Ain't it so, Buddy?”

“Yea,” Buddy said, “but I'm worried for it.”

They knew what he meant.

“Look at the planet of Junior Brown,” Mr. Pool told them.

They looked at the great planet. It was brown. It was stupendous. Somehow the other planets were mere copies of spheres already known. The planet of Junior Brown had come to life right in the room, out of themselves and how they felt about one another.

“Listen,” Mr. Pool said. “I got to dismantle the whole thing.” His bald head glistened. Its shining, anxious heat was the signal telling Junior and Buddy that the end was near.

“In other words,” Mr. Pool said, “we got to vacate the premises.” He spoke glibly, trying to make it easy on the boys. But Mr. Pool had no idea where he could rebuild the solar system. And he feared for Junior and Buddy if they stayed on the hook and took to the streets.

“Junior Brown is fixin' ta die,” Junior said. In his folding chair he spoke as a sage. He was Buddha tamping the eternal light.

“Don't put my sun out yet,” Buddy told him.

Mr. Pool said, “I'll have to start taking everything apart tonight and be finished with it by tomorrow night. I don't know what to do with it.” He lifted his hands, but kept them from touching the spheres. “I guess I can pack up everything and take it home. I bet I could get it all in a good-sized foot locker or cardboard box.”

Mr. Pool felt suddenly foolish. Here he was acting like a child, building himself some forbidden toy and playing with it in secret. He'd best be thinking about keeping his job. The thought of his job made him angry. What had come over him anyhow? No job or the hidden room, either, was more important than the one thing he knew to be true.

“The human race is bound to come one time,” he said, through the whirl of planets. He never was sure what he meant by always having to say that. But to his soul he knew Junior and Buddy were forerunners on the road down which the race would have to pass.

In the dimness Buddy blinked. Then his eyes widened and shone back the light in a stunning thought.

“Maybe it's already come,” he said. “Maybe the race is been here and is still here and you don't know where to find it.”

Mr. Pool had to smile. “If I don't know, then who does?” he said.

In the folding chair Junior rocked and rocked. “Say I got to tell my mother to come on down here,” Junior said. “Say I'll go to reform school if I don't.”

“He talking about Mr. Rountree,” Buddy told Mr. Pool. “Tomorrow morning that old AP going to catch up to all the lies we told him.”

Mr. Pool looked sympathetically from Buddy to Junior. “You boys got real unlucky,” he said. “It's a darn shame!” Grimly he smiled. “Rountree will have to get the attendance officer on you, or maybe worse, when you don't show up. But where for you to go, there's the worry.” Mr. Pool rubbed his forehead as though to wipe it of pain.

They all fell silent. Only Buddy had continued thinking clearly. “This is the last time we can come here,” he said.

“I don't see why,” Mr. Pool said. “You been coming here. You got caught one time but it don't mean you'll be caught again. I won't be caught again, either.”

“What if Rountree is out there waiting for us in the morning?” Buddy said.

Mr. Pool told him, “Rountree will wait in his office like he's supposed to. Don't you worry, just come here a little earlier, if you want.”

Tomorrow was Friday. Buddy remembered, he had to go with Junior to Miss Peebs' house on Friday. He looked at Mr. Pool. “You say you will be here tomorrow night?”

“I'll have everything put away by then,” Mr. Pool said.

Buddy turned to Junior. “What you going to do about tomorrow?” he said to Junior. “How you going to tell your mother to be here?”

But Junior wouldn't say. He sat there, rocking, watching the solar system come to an end. Buddy dropped to the floor; with his arms hugging his knees, he watched Mr. Pool. Tediously they all waited out the day for school to be over. Only after the last buzzer sounded and all the teachers had gone did Buddy and Junior prepare to leave.

“I'm counting on you,” Mr. Pool thought to tell Buddy at the door. “It's not fair of me, I know, but I depend on you.”

With tiredness showing in his eyes, Buddy looked fondly on Mr. Pool. If he could have a father, he would have only this man. “I got a feeling,” Buddy said, “everything's going to be all right.”

The two of them made their escape. Buddy accompanied Junior all the way to Junior's house. On the steps outside he told Junior, “I'll pick you up early tomorrow.” They stood there with Junior answering nothing.

Buddy would have liked to have known what Junior would tell his mother but he wouldn't ask Junior again. He left. He turned on his heel and let Junior go up alone.

Junior entered his mother's apartment. His mother was there for him, as she always was. She was there but this time she didn't rush to meet him. She didn't pick at him or question him with her bright watching. His mother acted distant, strange. She retreated to the kitchen while he put his outer garments away. Junior wondered about her silence only for a moment. He was worn out. He went to his room, unwilling to face her without knowing what he would say. Junior found his room neat and clean, as usual. He went straight to the bed and fell heavily across it.

“What am I going to do?” Junior wondered. He closed his eyes but he couldn't sleep. Exhausted, his mind tumbled with thinking. He felt almost glad to be nearly finished with hiding in the basement room. Months of sitting in the dark hiding place had become monotonous. Days of sitting had bored him close to death. Only with Mr. Pool and Buddy's construction of the solar system had his mind been occupied for a while.

Junior is fixin ta die. If I tell Mama to come to school, then what? Friday, I got to go see Miss Peebs. Saturday, Daddy comes home. Sometimes. Then what?

Junior thought and thought. With his eyes closed, all was night. He could be red.

Junior jumped, remembering something. He slid to the edge of the bed and looked underneath it. In a moment he let the bedspread fall back over the box spring. Grunting, he hurled himself over to the closet.

I was sleepy this morning. I could have put the canvas away.

Junior knew he hadn't taken The Red Man up. Inside his closet, he found his paint box and the piece of wood he used for mixing paints, but no Red Man. Suddenly Junior felt too heavy to stand up any longer. He lurched for the bed and lay there panting until he had calmed. At suppertime his mother called him. She wouldn't come into his room to get him.

Junior ate his supper alone in the kitchen. He ate slowly everything she had placed on the table for him to eat. His mother had disappeared in her own room, closing the door firmly behind her.

No use his looking for The Red Man. His mother would have got rid of it by now. Cutting it to pieces, she would have burned The Red Man piece by painted piece in the kitchen sink.

No use for him ever to explain to her. Seeing all those people living in The Red Man—doing awful things, she would say—his mother knew now that she hadn't known him at all.

The Red Man people just had been living their lives. With that thought Junior knew what he had to do. So he ate his food, savoring its rich taste, loving it tightly, the way some folks love a gamble.

Junella Brown sat in her rocker next to the big bed in her bedroom. She had her arms crossed tightly below her narrow chest. Her legs were crossed one over the other just as tightly, and her eyes were fixed on the closed door.

She had found the canvas with the paint still wet, under Junior's bed, when she had entered his room to clean it this very morning. As she was making his bed, her foot knocked against the edge of something. Stooping down to see, she'd pulled out that big canvas Junior had been painting. At first Junella couldn't tell what it was but something made her go search Junior's desk for his magnifying glass. When she found the glass, she came back; she got on her knees to examine the painting.

“Oh, what an awful thing!” she whispered now. “What a terrible, sick thing he's done!”

Junella watched the door. If Junior came to the room, she would have to face him. She hoped he wouldn't. She wanted to wait for his father to come home.

The painting had been full of people involved with one another in a way Junella knew any decent boy would never think to draw. And to see how he had squeezed them all in this red, red figure of a man! Is that what Junior's mind was full of? Images of people living their most private lives? And Junior had painted whole streets of people—robbers, drunkards—people hurting one another. There had even been a figure that resembled herself. There had been that boy, that Buddy Clark, who was everywhere in the painting, all over the streets.

If there was some way she could get that Buddy Clark sent away, Junella could then maybe help Junior back to reality.

Junior had been in the painting, like a single brown ball bouncing on street corners, jiving in school yards. Junior had painted himself everywhere in the city where he had no business being!

Junella had experienced a mild asthma attack after finding the painting. She had needed to use the nebulizer but had come out of the attack only slightly weakened. Afterward she'd slept for some time. When she awoke, she'd returned to Junior's room and taken care of that painting. Wet as it was, she didn't dare burn it, so she sent it down the incinerator with the rest of her garbage.

“That's that,” she said from the rocker. “I'll never give him canvas again as long as I live.”

After he'd eaten his supper, Junior went back to his room and played the piano halfheartedly. He didn't emerge from his room until morning. Only once did Junella come out of her bedroom, to clean up the kitchen after Junior and to wash up in the bathroom. Then she went directly to her room. She stayed there, controlling herself so she would not bring on another attack. In the morning she rose with the alarm clock ringing and at once went in to prepare Junior's breakfast. She would not say a word to him, she told herself. He would have to come to her and ask her for help.

Junella prepared Junior a good, hearty meal, just the kind he liked. She was certain that with the breakfast they could sit down and have a good conversation about what he had done.

“
I destroyed that painting, Junior, because I know you weren't yourself when you thought to paint it.
” Yes, that was the kind of thing she might say to him when they sat down to talk.

Standing in the dining room, she called Junior to come for breakfast. Then Junella went back to the kitchen and sat down. “
You can never have materials for painting, Junior, until you can demonstrate to me you will occupy your mind with thoughts proper and normal for your age group.
” Yes, she could say that. Junior had always been the kind of boy who was obedient, who listened to his parents.

When his father gets here, the two of them can talk man to man, Junella thought. Oh, thank God for a man like Walter for the boy. He would know just what to say to bring Junior back to right thinking.

Junior was slow coming to breakfast this morning. When Junella knocked on his bedroom door, there was no answer. She looked in. Junior wasn't there.

Junior had fled the house long before Junella's alarm went off. He had taken his paint box, his music and that funny, childish wind-up toy he always kept on his desk. He'd even taken his raincoat, his best shoes and new brown cashmere sweater. He'd worn his best suit.

If Junella had thought quickly enough, she would have realized that Junior took mostly that which would keep him warmest on cold winter nights. She thought only that Junior was angry over the painting. She figured he would stay out late with that Buddy Clark of his, way late, past his lesson and maybe past his bedtime.

“All right then,” she told herself. “You can just stay out there, but you'll get hungry. You'll get cold and tired and then you'll head for home. Oh, it's a lesson some boys have to learn. I won't get myself sick over it. You wait until your father gets home!”

Mr. Pool had taken it upon himself to care for them this day. Junior and Buddy. In the basement room Mr. Pool had brought enough supplies to last them a good five days. With the way Junior Brown could eat, maybe no more than three days, Buddy thought. Still there was lots of stuff. There was a good-sized carton with two thermos bottles of hot chocolate. There were hard-boiled eggs, a half gallon of milk and lots of sweet rolls wrapped in plastic wrap to keep them fresh. There were egg salad sandwiches, ham sandwiches and cheese sandwiches. There was even a jar of pickles and a half-pack of cold beer for Mr. Pool.