The Runner (23 page)

True enough.

“And that's not sour grapes,” Tommy told him.

Bullet didn't exactly believe that. He hoped Tommy didn't either.

“Because I never knew, until I had the time, how much better I could use my time. Listen, Bullet.” He glanced quickly at the chess players, who were entirely absorbed in their game. “How would you feel if you had a chance to really do something?”

I do. I have. I did.

“I was talking to some people—I can't tell you who, but it would surprise you—and we think it's time for some action. Not any of this peaceable mass movement stuff, that's what they want us to do because then nothing changes. But—

“Can you keep a secret? What am I asking, I know you can. Torture wouldn't get something out of you you didn't want to say. But, for example, there are files and records in the office, on everybody. Which students can't see. I don't even know if teachers can see theirs. They're a little branch of the damned FBI in there.”

Tommy talked on, but Bullet stopped listening. He was looking at Tommy, seeing a little kid with curly red hair and white skin that sunburned so bad he had to spend all summer in an undershirt. When you shot marbles with Tommy and you won, you could be sure he would win them back the next day, playing with grim concentration, not talking or messing around, until he counted the pile in front of him and looked up, satisfied that he was ahead again.

“And they don't even lock the door. A couple of guys, a little kerosene, and whoosh—”

Losing ate away at Tommy, like rot eating away at some vine, until he figured out how to get even. If he'd been the one to walk out of that assembly, Tommy would have felt all right about himself, but he never fought back openly. And now he was talking about incendiaries.

“What are you after, Tommy?” Bullet asked.

“Two things, really,” Tommy answered eagerly. “First to get rid of their records . . .” And he was off, about the kinds of records and the kinds of uses they were put to. Bullet looked at him, at the way his long bright hair straggled around his face and his cheeks looked bony and his eyes were bitter. What had happened to Tommy?

Growing up.
What happened to all of them. Tough luck. Bullet wanted to lean across to Tommy, lean across the years, really, and yell at him. “You don't have to be like this, you've got other choices; at least tell yourself the truth, nobody can make you lie to yourself.” He jammed the wax paper back into the brown bag, angry, ready to move away.

“. . . including their suspicions, if they think you're on dope or anything . . .” Tommy talked on.

But why should Bullet be angry? Because he knew Tommy wouldn't listen, wouldn't hear. So what? What did Tommy matter anyway; he'd known for years how different they were, how different they'd gotten. What did he want from Tommy? He wanted— He stopped himself, then moved his brain slowly forward again.
No compromising,
he reminded himself. Because Patrice was right about him. He wanted Tommy to be as good as he could. And Tommy wasn't going to do that, not by a long shot. So Bullet wanted—not to care.

“. . . in a court and it gets treated like holy writ and none of it's been investigated, just rumors written . . .”

And he couldn't do anything about it, not just Tommy, couldn't
change anything, couldn't not care, but everybody—he couldn't make those runners want to practice as hard as they could. He couldn't make any difference, however hard he ran himself. Not to Liza, especially. She was so far away he couldn't reach far enough to connect even if he tried to. She was just out there, probably singing some song where he couldn't even hear her. He'd lost her. Okay, he could take the truth. He minded losing her, dumb old Liza with her hair like honey and her songs like spun gold. He guessed he'd have to take that truth too.

“Hey, man, are you listening to me?”

Bullet was listening to Liza, singing an old song, “. . . any stars in my crown, When at evening the sun goeth down . . .” in her molten voice.

“I don't know why I bother trying to connect with you,” Tommy said. “You've been screwed up for years, Bullet. You don't care about anything.”

That got Bullet's attention.
Don't I wish,
he almost wished.

“But listen to me. The other reason is, if we do that, then the blacks will know we're really on their side. Really committed . . .”

Because Tommy, and everybody in the room, was going to go out and be about a quarter of what they could be. They'd say it was because life was so tough, that was the lie they'd tell themselves. Liza wasn't so different, wasn't so bad—and Tommy couldn't even sing. They'd get old and wrinkled up like raisins and they'd think it was life's fault they'd never done what they could.

“. . . white society that destroys them, gives them a second-rate education then gets on their backs for not being better educated. Makes it impossible for them to get good jobs and sometimes any job at all, then complains because they're on welfare. Did you know there are as many whites as blacks on welfare? You never hear about that, do you?”

Because they didn't like what the choices cost them. Who did? Like Tommy, he'd said he knew what it would cost printing that editorial, but when it cost that, here he was, getting even. Just the way he always had, getting back all the marbles. Bullet listened to Tommy now, because he was too sad to do anything else.

“It's just a different form of slavery. If I were black it wouldn't feel much different to me. Economic slavery and sociological slavery. I'd be pissed, if I were black.”

Yeah but you're not.
Because you cannot be what you are not. It was hard enough to be what you were. Easier, Bullet saw now, to pretend you were something you weren't and say if you were how you'd feel and behave, easier than working on yourself.

“. . . organized around a leader. It would have to be a black, because they don't much trust us. That Shipp character they beat up, he'd be good. You hear them talk about him, they think he walks on water. But the guy's got a wife and kid, he's got jobs because they don't have much family around here to help out; he's not as useful as he could be.”

Tommy's
they
s were switching around, and he didn't even hear it. He didn't want to hear it.

“I thought,” Bullet said carefully, “Vietnam was your personal crusade.”

“Man, I had that all wrong. This is the real war. Look around you—this room looks like a layer cake, half vanilla, half chocolate. And there's no real difference between us, except the vanilla knows how to keep the chocolate on the bottom of the pan. This is the real war, right here. This is the big one, the long one. This is the war with some future and purpose to it. And all over the color of a man's skin. To prove that white are better. To hide the fact that we're all the same.”

Tommy had his hands on half the truth, because whatever the cost to Bullet personally, the Vietnam thing would end. One way
or the other, win or lose. But Tommy needed the other half of the truth. “We aren't all the same,” Bullet said.
Nothing is more different than each person, one from the other, every one from every other.

People were beginning to empty out of the lunch room.

You've got to honor the differences, or what's similar will be useless to you.

“You're kidding,” Tommy said. “C'mon, Bullet—you really think you're any different from the rest of us? Oh, I grant you, with that trick you have of not saying much, you look different, and you're not scared of anything, but how does that make you so damned superior? Everybody sits down to take a crap, Bullet.”

So what.

“You had me fooled. I thought you were really something; I even admired you. You looked so strong, nobody could pull the wool over your eyes. I thought—last week—you were going to tell them, really let them have it. But you never were my friend, were you. You don't have friends; you don't have any connections to anybody at all. That's the only thing that bothers me, seeing through you like that. I don't give a damn about their stupid newspaper, or being editor, I don't even miss it. I don't even mind seeing how far downhill Cheryl can pull the thing in a week. But you—”

Bullet stood up. He looked down at Tommy, down across the years. “You don't have to settle for half the truth,” he said.

For a second, he thought Tommy understood. Then the pale bony face closed him out. “You can't fool me,” Tommy said, bitterly. “Not anymore. I didn't think you'd try. I thought better of you, Bullet.”

“No, you didn't,” Bullet said, meaning exactly and precisely what he said.

T
hat night, Bullet came into the kitchen while his parents were having their dinner. His father served onto the two plates from a platter of pork chops, a bowl of stewed tomatoes and a bowl of noodles. The old man was just starting to serve when Bullet came in. There were five chops, three for the old man, two for his mother. She used to cook pork chops up in nines, three for him, two for her, three for Bullet, and the extra one against a large appetite. The extra one always got eaten.

She used to cook platters of food, to feed all of them, her hands quick and strong, making bread, washing up, her voice sharp and quick. No matter how stony his father sat, she put all the quickness she had into that room. Until they started leaving, no more Johnny to fight back, no more Liza to go stand beside her mother with tears rolling out of her eyes. Now his mother sat as stony as his father, all her quickness gone.

Bullet walked over to the shelves. He wanted to slam his fist through the glass panes of the cupboard door. But why so angry? Because there was always nothing he could do, because Liza shouldn't have left her here like this with the two of them. Because he was going to leave too, he was going to have to leave the farm behind him and never come back. Never work his own crops out of it and make it as good as it once had been—and he could have done that, he could feel that in his back and his hands.
But he'd known for years now he was going to lose it. So why so angry?

Because he wasn't doing a damned thing for her. Couldn't. Just adding to it for her.
Too bad. Tough luck.

No compromising,
he warned himself. Because he wanted—he wanted to do something, even knowing he couldn't change anything, not the way things were, not the way things were going to be. Because he couldn't stand to be one of the things that worked to break her. He wasn't, he wouldn't be, he didn't want to do that: that could scare him, scare him cold down through his jittery bones.

I never thought,
Bullet thought, knowing how he looked right then as if he could stand outside the window and see himself: straight back and shoulders stiff, chin high, face a mask, and the skin of his head bronzed. He hoped not, he hoped he wasn't, but he couldn't be sure. He just didn't know how much like his old man he was.

Thoughtfully, Bullet took a can of spaghetti out of the cupboard, opened it, scraped the coagulated mass into a pan and put it over a low flame on the stove. He left the wooden spoon in the pan. He took down a bowl and got out an eating spoon, thinking. He stirred the loosening stuff in the pan, wondering how they managed to get that bright red-orange color to their sauce. He poured himself a glass of milk, drank it down, then poured himself another.
Okay,
he said to himself.

Behind him, utensils clanked against china as they ate. Nobody said anything to him, but he could feel the anger pouring out of the old man. It blew all around him: go away, go away.
In time,
he answered; ignoring it in the meantime.

Steam came up from the pan, and he scraped some spaghetti into his bowl. He took a deep breath, then carried the bowl, glass and spoon to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down. Without looking around, he started to eat.

The air in the room got very still, like an iceberg forming all at once. Bullet looked up briefly: his father stared at his plate, his mouth working; his mother stared at the middle of the table, just waiting. Bullet went back to his slow eating.

Finally, his father spoke to him: “At the risk of being repetitive, I said I didn't want to lay eyes on you until you looked like a human being again. I believe you were excused from the table until then.” The cold eyes looked right at Bullet.

Bullet looked right back.
The old wind in the old anger,
he thought. He kept his voice quiet when he answered:

“No.”

That was everything he had to say about the question, the general question and the particular one.

The old man couldn't do anything, except get up and leave the table himself. “I don't eat with animals,” he said to Bullet.

“That's right, you don't,” Bullet said.

The only question was how the old man was going to approach this.

“So you're not going to respect my desire not to have to look at you,” his father said. He didn't move his eyes from Bullet's face. Bullet didn't need to say anything to that. “Nor my request not to have you at my table.”

“It's her table too.”

“Abigail?”

She looked at Bullet then, and he couldn't tell what she was thinking. She looked along at her husband, still without expression. She didn't say anything. Bullet heard what that was supposed to say: I'll stand by him as long as we live.

Well, he knew that; he wasn't going to quarrel with either of them about that.

His father chewed on his meat, ignoring both of them. After a long time he said, “I'll take some applesauce.”

Bullet dug into the spaghetti again. The old man was just going to pretend it hadn't happened.