The Promise of Jesse Woods (27 page)

It was another question for the list. My father had talked about God allowing bad things to happen for the greater good. He preached about Lazarus and how Jesus waited in another town until his friend died so he could raise him from the dead. Romans 8:28 was quoted like an old story in the family—all you needed was the first few words and everybody finished it. “We know that all things work together . . .” But the verse didn’t help Jesse.

“If God knows everything that’s going to happen and
it’s all going to be bad, why did he make this old world in the first place?”

“My dad says if you ever doubt God’s love, you should look at the cross.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? If I doubt God’s love when my mama is spitting up blood on the linoleum, it’s supposed to help that Jesus was up there bleeding? That’s not much of a comfort to me.”

“I’m not explaining it well. Bad things happen so that good can come out of it.”

“You mean like Grissom and Chaffee and White?”

I didn’t get the reference.

“Dickie can tell you. He’s got a magazine with pictures. Three astronauts that burned up on the launching pad. So we went to the moon. Was it worth it to sacrifice those men? Is that how it works? God gives somebody heartache and trouble and somebody else gets to go to the moon and back?”

She stood, leaving a handful of wildflowers on top of her sister’s grave. “I don’t get it, Matt. I’m not seeing it. Tomorrow I’m going to take that little girl to a stranger’s house and leave her. Why would he take our mama?”

The next day I was at the end of my grandmother’s driveway early, waiting for the bus and hoping to see Jesse and Daisy pass, a sick feeling in my stomach. My mother had taken me to school for a tour of the classrooms, but the smell of the hallways and the imposing high ceilings still gave me a feeling of dread.

My father walked to the end of the driveway. He had been distant since the incident with Gentry Blackwood and though I still held it against him, I kept remembering the death of Dickie’s father, and that softened me a little. I didn’t want to keep my promise never to forgive him, but I didn’t see a way around it, or a way toward him. He retrieved the newspaper and opened to the sports page. “Your Pirates did well yesterday. Won a doubleheader against Philadelphia. That’s eight in a row. They might win a hundred this year.”

“Going back to the World Series,” I said. The Pirates had played the Reds again in late July and only won one of three. But they were almost twenty games over .500 and a sure bet for the postseason.

“Not if the Reds can help it. They split with the Dodgers.”

“Wish we could see a doubleheader,” I said.

He looked back at the paper. Mark Spitz had won his seventh gold medal at the Olympics in Munich. My father lingered a little, then finally put a big hand on my shoulder.

“I know going to a new school is not easy.”

“It helps that I have a couple of friends.”

He nodded, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He looked like he wanted to say something, wanted to give some encouragement, but finally he nodded again and patted me. “You have a good day.”

I kept looking up the road, expecting to see Jesse’s bike. My eye fell on the brick structure by the drive, something
my grandfather had begun years earlier to hold the mailbox. He’d never finished it and it sat as a monument of sorts. I spotted a rock perched on it with an envelope underneath. I opened it and found a scrap of paper with pencil scrawl that read,
PB, save me a seat. And watch out for Blackwood.

I stuffed the paper in my pocket, smiling. No matter what happened at school, Jesse was my friend.

The bus rumbled by and turned around somewhere up the hollow, and when it appeared again, there were already ten kids inside. I sat as far away from Gentry as I could. The bus wound along the country road and up another hollow and finally plunged toward Dogwood.

To everyone who passed in the aisle, I put a hand down and said, “It’s saved.” I hoped Dickie would be able to sit on my right and Jesse to my left. A boy with a fresh haircut who looked like he had no business anywhere near a junior high looked at me with such terror that I let him sit by the window. I knew Dickie would understand.

“Thanks,” the kid said, his eyes darting around the bus. His clothes smelled faintly of smoke. “I’m Alan Thompson. What’s your name?”

I told him and he nodded, then turned to watch the passing scenery.

My strategy of saving a seat for Jesse worked until we reached Brookwood Estates and a nicely dressed group got on. A smiling girl with short, dark hair bounded down the aisle. I recognized Gwen Bailey from church. She had introduced herself to me and sat by me on the first day of
Sunday school. Before I could tell her the seat was saved, she plopped her generous figure down and laid her notebooks on her lap.

“Morning, Matt.”

“Hi,” I said nervously, trying to figure out how to tell her she needed to move. She was dressed immaculately and her perfume was like some exotic island, all coconut and pineapple. “Um, I was going to save this for—”

“If you need any help your first day, I’d be glad to show you around. Shadow you to your classes. It’s hard being the new kid at the start of school. If you come in the middle of the year, everybody knows you’re new. But if you start in the fall, you get lost in the shuffle.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The bus rumbled ahead, the brakes squeaking as we stopped in town. I was about to ask if she could move when I saw Jesse at the back of the line of kids waiting across from the gas station. She had her head down and held on to a grocery bag.

“Your dad’s sermon was really good Sunday. I got a lot out of it,” Gwen said. “We’re not the type of people who have roast pastor for lunch—you know, people who criticize everything. Not that the church is perfect.”

“You’re the new pastor’s kid?” Alan said.

I nodded and watched Jesse board, looking for me. Finally she spotted me and her face tore at my heart. As she passed, I mouthed, “I’m sorry.” I could only imagine what the morning had been like as she dropped Daisy at day care.

“What you got in the bag, Woods?” Gentry said. “Horse turd sandwich for lunch?”

Jesse didn’t respond, just moved to the back and stood until the driver barked at her.

“Yeah, sit down, Woods,” Gentry said.

“You’ll learn quickly about our social order,” Gwen said, leaning close and lowering her voice. “Choose your friends wisely and avoid the miscreants.”

I had to give Gwen credit for her exemplary vocabulary, but the way she categorized Jesse turned my stomach. I glanced down at the notebooks on her lap and fear gripped me. “Are we supposed to bring notebooks?”

“I contacted my teachers ahead of time and found out what to bring. You don’t have to worry. They’ll pass out textbooks today and get everybody’s name. It’s low-key, other than gym.”

My heart sank. “Does everybody dress for gym?”

“You can sit out the first day if you forgot your stuff.”

I wondered if that was what Jesse was carrying in the bag. I looked back but couldn’t see her.

Dickie got on at the last stop. I raised my head to him and he waved.

“How’s it going, Dickie?” I yelled.

“Lookin’ for a breakthrough,” he said, then miraculously found a seat in front.

“I thought people like him are supposed to sit in the back of the bus,” Gentry yelled. Others laughed and Gwen shook her head.

“Obviously affirmative action has not reached the hills.
The key to getting along here, Matt, is not to be different. You pay a price if you are.”

“But being smart is different, isn’t it?”

“You have to choose how you’re going to be different. Some things are worth the slings and arrows.”

We arrived at school and I was drawn by the tide of students. As I exited the bus, Gwen took me by the arm to introduce me to her friends. I mildly protested, turning to look for Jesse, but somehow I missed her. We had fifteen minutes before classes began, and Gwen pointed to the cafeteria in the lowest level of the school.

“They serve breakfast to the poor kids every morning,” she said.

“Show me.”

She took me there and I scanned the tables but didn’t see Jesse. After meeting a few of Gwen’s friends, I broke away, passing the gymnasium. Jesse walked through the doors, her hair dripping wet. She wore second-hand jeans and the same stitched shirt.

“Hey,” I said.

“You make new friends?” she said, deadpan and moving toward the lockers.

“I’m sorry about the bus. There was nothing I could do.”

“Didn’t you get my note?”

“I did. I tried to save you a seat.”

“I understand if you don’t want to associate with me.”

“Stop it,” I said, grabbing her arm. She pulled away quickly, but I locked eyes with her. “This is not about
me associating with anybody. You think I’m ashamed of you?”

She clenched her teeth, brow furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

Her chin quivered. “I just needed to tell somebody about this morning. It was awful. Daisy about scratched me to death when I left.”

“She’ll get used to it, don’t you think?”

Jesse looked at the floor. “That’s the story of our lives. We just get used to things.”

“Why is your hair wet?”

“No reason,” she said.

Then I put it together. Jesse had no running water. She used the school shower to get presentable.

“Did you get breakfast this morning?” I said.

“I’m all right.”

I put a hand on her shoulder and she felt like nothing but skin and bones. “One day at a time, okay? You’re going to make it.” I paused. “No. We’re going to make it.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1984

I knew when I woke up that this was the day I would talk with Jesse again. I needed to fish or cut bait, as my father often said when I was a kid. How I would fish was the question.

I pulled out the pictures Uncle Willy had given me, and that produced a desire for more remnants of my childhood. In the back of my closet I found more pictures and newspaper clippings.

I’m convinced everyone has a pivotal year in their lives, a year when things coalesce in a way that leaves you forever changed. For me, that year was 1972, and not just because of the move to Dogwood. It was the last year
pitchers batted for themselves in the American League. The beginning of the baseball season was mired in strike talk. At the Olympics, eleven Israeli athletes were killed by terrorists, ushering in new fears in a world filled to the brim. World events swirled, lining up for big changes we could not anticipate. The Vietnam War was winding down, but there were flare-ups. People in West Virginia said the problem in Vietnam wasn’t that we were at war, but that we weren’t being allowed to win. President Richard Nixon went to China that year, but there was also a break-in at the Watergate Hotel. The seeds of an impeached president and the malaise of later years were sown in 1972, but I could not see any of this because that was the year I fell in love with Jesse Woods.

It was also the year I fell more deeply in love with drama, for it was the year I met Mr. Kerry Lambert. I had expected Dogwood to be culturally backward but Mr. Lambert was a ray of light. He saw something in me in our language arts class that he called forth over the next few years and I threw myself into every play and musical he produced.

This morning, the news of Jesse’s pregnancy, if it was true, still hung over me, and I felt I needed someone else’s wisdom before I approached her again. I drove to Mr. Lambert’s neighborhood. The leaves were turning on the hillside and there was a fresh chill in the air. We’d had cast parties at his house and stayed by his pool until the wee hours. His wife had been one of the kindest people I have ever known. Mr. Lambert was a Christian, but my parents
considered him just barely one since he was in what they considered a liberal denomination. Mr. Lambert always listened to their objections to the plays he chose, and it was a personal victory when we performed
The Sound of Music
in my junior year. My father had enthusiastically encouraged the congregation to see it because of its “story of faith in the crucible.”

Mr. Lambert had sensed the friction between my father and me over drama and faith. My father’s was a retreating religious system that had deemed Hollywood and Broadway as “of the devil.” But there were glimpses of a cease-fire between us.

“I don’t know why your dad wouldn’t want to use that creative mind of yours,” he said to me one day. It was a seed well-planted because a few weeks later, as my father was working his way through Colossians, I wandered into his office one day after school.

“I was reading ahead to chapter 3 for this week and had an idea about how you can illustrate the message,” I said.

He put down his pen and leaned back in his wooden swivel chair. “I’m listening.”

“It talks about putting away anger, wrath, malice. It’s almost like Paul has attended our church.”

He smiled wryly.

“The passage says to put off the old self and put on the new, right?”

He nodded. “What are you thinking?”

I explained my idea of illustrating the message with tattered clothes with symbolic words pinned to them—
anger
,
malice
,
lying
, etc. “And then, beside the pulpit you could have a coat tree. A shirt that says
compassion
, a tie that has
humility
on it. And you take off the tattered stuff and put on the new ones.”