The Spyglass Tree (11 page)

Anyway I was scandalized, outraged, and all but exasperated as soon as I turned the corner and saw them and realized what they were doing that bright blue second Saturday afternoon of that first October. There they were and I was already that close and there was nothing you could do about it except try to get on along past it as if I didn’t even see them. But one of them had already spotted me the minute I came in sight.

Well, goddamn, if here ain’t another one of them.

What they doing coming all around back up in here? Ain’t nobody sent for none of them as I knows of.

Me neither. Maybe he lost or something.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised once you get their head out of all them books.

Hey, you lost Mister Collegeboy? Hey, you, yeah, you. I’m talking to you. Yeah you. I axed you a question. You want something around here, Mister Collegeboy? What you looking for around here? What you looking at? Ain’t you never seen nobody rolling no bones before? Ain’t you never seen nobody drinking no whiskey before? Well, now you can tell them you seen some low-down niggers galloping the shit out of them old affikan dominoes all over the place back in here and looka here, you can also tell them you seen me drinking myself some good old corn whiskey and then tell them I say win, lose, or draw I’m still going to have enough left to buy me some good old cookshop grub and then I going to buy me some good old city girl pussy. You goddamn right, I’m going buy me some county seat whorehouse pussy.

Aw, man, a not so loudmouthed one said, them college boys don’t even know what you talking about. Them college boys studying about bookkeeping and joggerfy and all them kind of things. Them college boys ain’t got no time to be fooling around with what you talking about.

Now wait a minute, another one said. That ain’t the way I heard it. Now the way I heard it, them books ain’t the only thing them college boys like to stick their nose up in, if you get my latter clause.

Hey, wait a minute there, the loud one said again, coming toward me for the first time as I moved on along the block. I had slowed down just because I knew they had expected me to speed up. Hey, hold on there boy when I’m talking to you.

That’s when I stopped and turned and said what I said, which had exactly the effect I had wanted and expected it to have.

I said, Sounds to me like somebody is just about to let his big loud snaggle mouth get his bony ass kicked raw, and he stopped where he was and then he said, Who you think you talking to and I said, Ain’t nothing to think about, old pardner. I’m talking to anybody too square to know that when the son-of-a-bitch he woofing at get through stomping his ass, he won’t even want to
hear
about no pussy for a month of Saturdays. I said, If you looking for somebody to cut you a new asshole, I’m just the son-of-a-bitch to oblige you.

That was when he seemed to decide that moral outrage was the better part of valor. Hey, y’all hear this, y’all heard him, supposed to be some kind of high-class college boy and listen what kind of language he using—you ain’t no better than nobody else. But he had turned and was talking to them, not me.

That was when he suddenly had to realize that he had no way of knowing anything at all about me, and my guess is that he didn’t really know anything about any other college boys either. So that’s when he said, See there, and then said, So that’s a Mister Collegeboy for you. Suppose to be up there getting all that high-class education and just listen at him. Y’all heard him. You can’t even make a little joke without here he coming talking all that old gutter language and still think somebody supposed to
respect
them.

But he was talking
about
me. Not
to
me. To
them
. To everybody
present
except
me. He didn’t even
look
in my direction again. Obviously he was somehow totally oblivious to the likes of Daddy Shakehouse Anderson, also known as the Nighthawk or Big Shit Pendleton from Galveston, Texas, or Speckle Red, also known as Florida Red, the Juice Head, or Sneaky Pete Davis, the First Lord of the Outlying Regions and a few other certified campus thugs that I had already met even then. Not to mention my own roommate.

W
hat finally happened to Little Buddy Marshall when I was in the eleventh grade was the end of something that had already been underway for some time even before he began to talk about it the way he kept on doing throughout the whole summer of the year before. Sooner or later he would bring everything we talked about back around to that, and when I said what I said about school I knew exactly what he was going to say again.

He said, Man, like I been telling you all this time, man you welcome to Old Lady Metcalf and all that old hickory butt roll-call and blackboard do-do, and them dripping goddamn ink pens and them goddamn checker-back composition tablets. Man, every time I think about all them old stop and go examination periods, and man don’t mention them report cards, and you got to take them home and get them signed!

He said, Man you all right with me, Scooter. You know that, but man, hey shit, I reckon I got to be hauling ass to hell on out of this old Mobile, Aladambama, and all this little old two-by-four
stuff around these parts. Man, I got to go somewhere else. Man, I got to hit the goddamn road. Man, that’s all I can think about.

He said, Man, you know good and well you always been all right with me, starting right off from the get-go at the pump shed. I know you know that, Scooter. Everybody around here know that. But, man, when it comes to them old henhouse teachers over there on the hill ringing them goddamn bells and flopping them shit-ass foot rulers and watching everybody like a goddamn hawk, I am sorry, man. You can put up with all that kind of stuff because you like books, Scooter, and all them other old games and stuff and that’s you. But me, man, I don’t give a goddamn shit about any of that old shit and that’s me. So that’s you and that’s me, and I’m just saying I got to get myself on out of here and see me some of the real sure enough world for my own damn self.

Then he said, Any day now Scooter you just wait and see, and I knew better than to try to talk him out of anything once he had said what he had said the way he had said it, because what he had decided was that he was going to take a big risk on something come what may, and practical advice didn’t mean anything to him anymore. So I just said, Boy, which way you heading, man? And he said, Shoot, I’m just going, man (because he knew that I knew that his departure heading was going to be due north and then maybe northeast), and when I find me a place I like I might stay there for a while and then move on until I come to somewhere else.

I said, Sheeoot man. I said, Goddamn. I said, I already miss you too much as it is, Lebo. Because ever since I had become an Early Bird I was also almost always busy doing special extracurricular projects not only for Miss Lexine Metcalf but also Miss Edna Teale Wilcox, who is the one I always remember whenever I hear “High Society” because that was one of the piano numbers she used to play as march-in music after the flag-raising ceremony, and who was also Mister B. Franklin Fisher’s assembly program coordinator and was also going to be my advanced French teacher
and also my college preparatory counselor when I reached the twelfth grade.

There was also the fact that as soon as you achieved the status of a top-perching Early Bird, your name was added to the principal’s senior high school campus duty roster, which rotated weekly assignments to such daily details as raising and lowering the flag, checking playground equipment out and back in, and supervising elementary and junior high school playground activities, policing the grounds and overseeing litter removal, providing campus information and escort service to visitors, and so on and on to cover everything the faculty had decided would provide promising pupils an opportunity to develop a sense of responsibility, dependability, imagination, initiative—by all means initiative—and leadership potential.

None of that had ever been any part of anything that Little Buddy Marshall had ever looked forward to. After all, he didn’t even like football, basketball, track and field, and tennis, precisely because to him they, unlike baseball and boxing and fishing and hunting and horse-racing and even golf, were schoolboy games and he didn’t even want to hear about them.

So naturally you couldn’t say anything at all about how you were finding out that the more you knew about geography and history, the better you could read maps and mileage charts and timetables. Not that I was not also the one who had once told him the story I had read about the three princes of Serendip who had set out for no place in particular and had learned to take things as they came. But you couldn’t remind him of anything like that either because he may not have actually said, Man, you and them books, Scooter, boy you and them books, but that is what he would have been thinking. So I just let all of that pass but schoolboy (perhaps not beyond but certainly preparatory to anything else) that I had long since become, by that time I couldn’t help thinking how much better able to cope with the adventures he was heading
for if he already knew as much about the country at large as I did. I could draw a map of the continental boundaries and fill in all the states and capitals and all of the major lakes, rivers, mountains, plains, and deserts, and I could also name and visualize the largest cities and list the principal products and industries.

I said, Goddamn man, and as if he could read my concern, he said, Hey man, remember the good old days you and me used to have. Man, we sure used to have us some times, didn’t we, Scooter? And I said, Man, you know it too, and he said, Man, I sure do wish the hell you’d come on and go with me, and I said, Man, you know how bad I want to but, I got to stay here and try to finish up all this stuff first. Because I promised. I promised Mama, man, and I promised Miss Tee and I also promised Old Luze.

I said, You remember that time. But he said, Man, I know what you talking about but that was then. I’m talking about this is now. I’m talking about I don’t care what nobody said back then. I talking about I’m
going
this time, don’t care what no goddamnbody says.

I didn’t say anything else because I knew that you were not going to get anywhere arguing with him. But I didn’t really want to try to keep him from saying what he wanted to say, so I just wagged my head with my brows knitted and waited for him to go on, and that’s when he said, Man, I didn’t really promise Old Luze nothing because I didn’t really swear to all that old stuff he was talking about. I just promised him that I wouldn’t try to follow
him
no more like that, and I ain’t. I just said that because he caught us and he had our ass in a sling and what else could we do? I would’ve said anything under that bridge that time.

I let that go by also. All I said next was, Aw, man, can’t nobody squat back there and call me in there like you, especially with a man on base. And he said, Sheet man, I bet you anything by this next year you going to be ready to get in there and smoke that pill on in there to Old Big Earl himself. Shoot man, you could
be on your way to breaking that color line in the goddamn big leagues if it wasn’t for them taking up so much of your time with all them old other things over on that old hill.

We were sitting with our legs dangling out of the tailgate of the truck en route to Whistler and as you went on talking there were also the voices of the other members of the team joking and laughing at the same time, and I can also remember the corridor of overhanging trees and also the power lines along that part of Telegraph Road and how the exhaust fumes used to smell in those days that always become so vivid again no matter where I am when I hear a band playing the channel to “Precious Little Thing Called Love” again. Any time I hear that I also remember how the loose macadamized gravel used to look bouncing along in the red-clay dust the tires kicked back as you rolled on away toward the billboards in the open fields on the outskirts of Chickasaw
.

But before we got there we turned off and came on across Kraft Highway which was the only concrete-paved strip to stretch that far beyond the city limits in those days. Then somebody said we were on the Citronelle road and the next turn I remember was the one that brought us into the sandy rut that I always remember when something reminds me of the scrub oaks along the way to the playing field and picnic grounds up to the cypress slope from the Eight Mile Creek swimming place
.

That was that June, and we had already played home games against the Box Factory, and the Kelly Hill Nine, and Pine Chapel and had made one trip to Cedar Grove and had also played Chickasaw Terrace in Chickasaw Terrace and also back home. Then on the Fourth of July we played the matinee game in Plateau and as the summer rolled on we also traveled up to Saraland, Chastang, and Mount Vernon and out to Maysville and Oak Grove and also down the coast to Bayou La Batre and Pascagoula
.

I don’t remember how many games we won and lost that summer, but then there was no pennant to be won anyway because there was no organized league. Your team was tough or maybe about average or a pushover, and that was about it. You sent out letters of challenge which were either
accepted or rejected for one reason or another, and most of the games took place on open playing fields to which admission was free and which were kept in regulation playing condition by the players themselves under the supervision of the manager and team captain and usually with the help of a number of faithful fans and sometimes also a few local commercial sponsors
.

The main thing about the trip down to Pascagoula was not that we won the seven-inning matinee preliminary and that the adult team lost the big game, but the big dance band from New Orleans playing on a low platform under a wide moss-draped oak near the refreshment stand. They were there for the home team and the number they kept striking up every time their side scored again was “Cake Walking Babies from Home,” which I already knew from Miss Blue Eula’s record of old Clarence Williams’s Blue Five with Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Irvis, Buddy Christian, and Eva Taylor
.