Authors: H. M. Mann
The Waking (48 page)
“
Only time we could get the park,” Jerry says.
“
Besides,” Jeff says with a laugh, “it wasn’t like them slaves had calendars.”
On the tennis courts, some folks are selling clothes, and when Jeff and I carry in the boxes of Timberlands, he sells out in twenty minutes because he only charges them “a little over my costs,” he tells me.
“
Why?”
“
Why? They’re my family. I’d be crazy tryin’ to rip them off cuz they know where I live.”
“
What about other folks, like in Atlanta?” I ask.
“
They ain’t my people.”
I shrug. “They could be.”
He looks at me funny for the rest of the day after that.
I walk through the tennis courts watching kids play little games for prizes. They putt golf balls on green carpet, shoot mini-basketballs, throw footballs through holes, and even pick up ducks in a little baby pool, all to win prizes like pinwheels and jump ropes.
“
What’s all this for?” I ask the little girl who works the duck pool.
“
We’re raisin’ money for the children’s choir to go to Disney World,” she tells me. “Wanna try?” Her shirt says, “I sing for God in the St. John’s Children’s Choir.” She is so cute, her hair in little braids, each braid tied with a yellow ribbon.
“
Sure. How much?”
“
You gotta go down to the tent and get a card.” She points to a sign. “This one costs two smiles. I mark them off the card.”
“
So if I get a card, I can play?”
“
Uh-huh.”
“
I’ll be right back.”
I leave the tennis courts and head down a grassy hill to the basketball court where folks are serving drinks, hot smokes, nachos, burgers, fried fish, and hot dogs at one end, a stage and sound system set up on the other, one of those inflatable jumping castles in the middle. I weave through lots of running children and standing adults to the tent, using my last eight dollars to buy two cards.
“
You gonna be playin’ lots of games,” the girl selling the cards tells me.
“
Maybe.”
While soloists, duets, and a couple trios belt out some good, old-fashioned Gospel music on the sound stage, their songs and harmonies echoing on the cars flying by on Orange Avenue, I act like a kid. I try putting first and end up putting the ball off the tennis courts twice.
You’ll never play golf.
Tell me about it.
I do better with the mini-basketballs, but I still don’t make enough shots in thirty seconds to win a prize.
This is like the midway at Kennywood Park, Manny.
And I made ten in thirty seconds. I should have won
something.
These choir kids is hardcore.
At the football toss, I hit the edge of that hole three times, the ball bouncing back to me each time, kids giggling at me as they watch.
You’ll never play for the Steelers.
And at the duck pond, every duck I pick up doesn’t have a number on the bottom. The little girl giggles every time I come up empty, crossing off ten smiles on the card before I finally get a duck with the number two on the bottom.
“
You win!”
I want to tell her that I’ve already won, that her just seeing
me
is the greatest victory of my life. She holds out a bag full of toys, and I choose a pinwheel, spinning it in the hot breeze.
“
Your card’s all full,” she tells me.
I show her an empty card.
“
You bought
two?
”
Yeah, I’m crazy that way. I see a little boy who can’t be older than four standing a little ways off. “You want to play?”
He nods.
I hand him the card. “Here you go.”
He takes the card and immediately hands it to the little girl, the biggest smile on his face. I watch him win a prize on his first duck, and he, too, chooses a pinwheel.
Must be a lucky card. You should have used that one first.
And then … I wander, the pinwheel tucked into a belt loop. I help some kids across the bars at the playground, play tag, push kids on swings, some two at a time, hearing “Higher!” and “Look at me!” I could get used to this.
Me, too.
Now look who’s getting soft.
So I like kids. That don’t make me soft.
While I’m pushing these two kids, I see a white man and a little brown-skinned boy down by a creek skipping stones. “You know who that is?” I ask one of the little boys I’m pushing.
“
Oh, that’s Tae.”
“
Is that his daddy with him?”
“
Uh-huh.”
The man and the boy seem totally lost in their own little world. He crouches beside Tae and shows him how to toss the rock so it will skip. And when it does, he claps for his boy.
“
They’ll wear you out, Manny,” Jeff says behind me.
I turn, and he hands me a cold can of soda. “Thanks.” I hold the can up to my forehead.
“
Come on. Show’s startin’. You’re gonna like this cuz these boys can
sing.
”
I give the pinwheel to the little boy on the swing, wave goodbye to the kids on the playground, and they pout. Jeff calls for them to follow, and they leap off the swings, tagging along behind us. We join just about everyone else on the basketball court in front of the little soundstage.
“
Are they part of the choir?” I ask Jeff.
“
Nah. They just sing different places, and everybody here is related to them in some way or other.”
I watch five finely dressed black men doing a sound check, tapping mikes, saying, “Test … test.”
“
If we can just get them out of Roanoke,” Jeff says, “the whole world will know about them. They’re better than most of the groups you hear on the radio.”
And they are. Blending perfectly-matched voices in five-part harmony, they sing some R&B, some be-bop, even a little old-school rap before breaking into
a capella
G
ospel that has the crowd raising its hands to heaven and singing or humming along.
One song gets to me, though. It’s like they’re singing my life story:
Learn to walk on,
a lot in the way.
He didn’t know which way to go,
so he stumbled and fell.
On his knees he looked above
and saw the stars shining bright.
He said, “Oh Father, I need Your Love
if I’m to see another night.”
Sometimes I fall short.
That’s why I need You by my side.
You see the gift You gave to me,
I give it back to You.
If I make it through another day,
I owe it all to You.
It once was dark,
but now the light is shining through.
The fog is gone,
the night is there.
I fall on my knees,
and I pray.
If you need a shoulder to cry on,
I’ll be right by your side.
I have faith in Him
because I know He will provide.
When you feel alone
just walk inside His steps,
cuz when you see just one set
it means you’re not alone.
That’s some powerful music
.
Yeah.
If you ain’t crying by now …I don’t see no tears, Manny.
They’re inside. I’m too happy to let it show.
I feel you, man. I feel you.
The song ends with the Lord’s Prayer, and everyone in the crowd whispers it.
I feel that, too.
“
Having a good time?” Jeff asks.
“
Yeah. I’ve never been to one of these.” Though I plan to reunite with my family in Mobile as soon as I can.
Jeff hands me a reunion T-shirt. “You’re in the family now. We adopted you.”
I put it on over my shirt, and it hangs on me a bit. “It’s a little big.”
“
Cuz we is a big family!” Jeff jokes. “Eat you some hot smokes, Manny, fill that shirt up.” He pats my stomach. “Boy, ain’t you had nothin’ to eat today?”
I want to tell him I’ve been eating
life
all day, but he already looks funny at me as it is. “Where are them hot smokes?” I ask, and Jeff leads me to them, my new Virginia family parting like waves around me.
Part V: The Way Home
22: By truck, Roanoke to Pittsburgh
I barely sleep at all back at the house once the party winds down well after midnight, and I snooze through the first part of the trip on a gloriously sunny day.
“
Welcome to West by-God Virginia!” wakes me up.
“
Huh?”
“
We’re in West Virginia, cuz,” Jeff says.
I look out the window and see mountains all around me, some shrouded in fog, others gleaming bright green. “Looks kind of like Virginia.”
“
Yeah, not much difference. The people are different, though.”
I doubt that. People are people wherever you go.
Amen to that.
I pick up
Granddaddy’s Dirt
and try to block Jeff out, not that what he says isn’t interesting, but that the book takes off in a hurry in the first chapter. And then I get lost in the book while Jeff fusses about more construction, speeders, and his girl, Melanie, who didn’t show up for the reunion.
I fly through the book, which talks about sins of the past and a big flood in Georgia. So many die, yet folks survive. I become Kyle Scales, who has to deal with so much in such a short time. How can he even function as a man?
You’re functioning.
Yeah, but …
You’re surviving.
Yeah. I guess I am.
I re-read one part near the end over and over as we cross the Pennsylvania state line. At a service after the flood, the Reverend says:
There may be someone here today living in the sins of their ancestors. This can be the day to look back upon history and tell yourself, “That’s the day it ended.” That’s the day I grabbed Satan by the throat and cast him out of my bloodline.
This is the day it ends. This is the day my life begins again. This is the day I use the strength of my ancestors and grab life by the throat. Today. Today, I get to begin.
I race through the rest of the book, reading Chapter 35, the last chapter titled “While on the Way
Back
Home,” before we hit Allegheny County, and I hope to God that the last paragraph is prophetic for me:
Kyle and his fiancée, Camilla, would learn all too well this road home. And so would their children’s children, who were all destined for prosperity.
I close the book. “You finished it?” Jeff asks.
“
Yeah. It was … intense.”
“
I don’t read much.” He looks up at a sign. “I usually take Two-seventy-nine into Pittsburgh.”
The Fort Pitt tunnel might still be closed.
How do you know?
Trust me.
And where were you when I was reading?
I was reading, too. I can read, you know.
Sorry.
“
Where do you have to go?” I ask.
He looks at a clipboard. “The Carnegie Science Center.”
“
Yeah?” I smile. “That’s right next to Heinz Field. What are you hauling?”
Jeff shrugs. “Got me.”
“
Well, stay on Seventy-nine. I know a back way with less traffic.”