The Year the Lights Came On (11 page)

The punishment was proposed by Paul and it was severe: I was denied the privilege of running with Our Side for a month. No matter what happened, I could not belong. A beating would have been far kinder, far less painful. For the first time, I would be separated from Wesley, and for the first time I experienced the fumbling, remote feeling of insecurity.

*

I stayed to myself the rest of the day, voluntarily removed from Wesley and the others of Our Side. Freeman’s cloudy accusation of Dupree’s conduct was a higher grade of gossip than any awkward romance, and I was soon forgotten in the crossfire of charges and denials, speculation and certainties (it was shocking how many people remembered hearing “something” about Dupree).

I entertained my aloneness by thinking of my punishment as a sacrifice for Megan. In geography we had studied about monks in several Asian countries and how they could go forever being alone and purifying themselves with the harsh discipline of inner meditation. If they could do it, so could I. I was the descendant of a Cherokee Indian—even if the English and Irish and Scottish coagulation did dominate 95 percent of my heritage—and everyone knew Indians could sit for hours without moving or blinking.

I was thinking about this, and imagining Megan off in a whispery, other world, when Wesley interrupted.

“You better c’mon,” he said. “The school bus is loading.”

“I’m not ridin’ the bus,” I answered defiantly.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m walkin’ home, that’s what.”

“Daddy’ll give you a whippin’, too.”

“What’d I care?”

“No need to be mad,” Wesley said gently. “You knew the rules. You got to live by them, just like the rest of us.”

I wanted to tell Wesley that it was his fault, that Old Lady Blackwall punished me because of him. But I couldn’t. That would’ve been babyish. Besides, Indians knew how to take punishment and I was a descendant of a Cherokee.

“Don’t care,” I finally said. “I’m walkin’ home just the same.”

“All right. But there won’t be nothin’ I can do when Daddy whips you.”

I waited below the canning plant for the school bus to leave, carrying its chattering, writhing, covey of birdlike passengers to be deposited at mailboxes, intersections, and turn-offs over thirty-three miles of unpaved, red, washboard country roads. Watching them leave numbed me. A cruel, sarcastic reality echoed in an obscene falsetto of the chattering and laughter trailing the bus: one of its covey was missing and no one cared.

I tucked the two books for study in the crook of my arm and began walking rapidly through Clarence Sosbee’s cotton field, headed for Clarence Sosbee’s woods, where the finest natural
spring in Emery bubbled up at the roots of a stately beech tree. Sosbee’s Spring had the sweetest water in the world and there were Negroes in Emery who swore the nectar of that water cured illnesses, and that it was somehow connected to the Jordan River by an underground channel that ran through the middle of the earth. I had believed that story, or half-believed it, for years, and I could never pass Sosbee’s Spring without cupping a swallow of water in my hands and drinking slowly, waiting the miracle of the Jordan River. There were times when my body would tremble as the water released its coolness, and for the briefest flickering of time, I would see wholly the vision of Shining Heaven and Shining Jesus wearing a crown of stars.

I needed the water and I needed its curative, mystic powers. I had betrayed Our Side, but it was I who felt betrayed. Long, snaking vines of emotion twisted and climbed the trunk of my neck, choked off reason and sapped whatever false energy my defiance had forced to surface. The water was cool, sweet with the sweetness of moss and earth and roots and millions of years of slow evolution. I listened for the muted, whistling sound of the spring water happily swirling down the throat of a slender gully, playing against the delicate reeds of swamp grass that folded its leaves into the water. Somehow, to me, that sound was in perfect concert with the lyrics of mockingbirds and sparrows and wrens that flitted through the small undergrowth of mountain laurel, and that sound enveloped anyone who stopped to listen, and wonder.

I was slumped against a pillow of leaves when Megan spoke.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked.

I rolled to one side and brushed the leaves off my shirt. Megan. Pale green eyes, hair as blond as a full moon.

“No,” I said. “I’m not mad. How’d you know I was here?”

“I watched you. Why didn’t you ride the bus?”

“I wanted to walk home,” I answered. “Wesley was pretty upset about everything.”

“Pleasing him means a lot to
you.”

“Naw,” I lied. “Naw. I just didn’t want to ride the bus, that’s all.”

“Oh…”

Megan sat beside the beech tree that fed from Sosbee’s Spring. She picked up a long stick and began to make cursive sweeps across the top of the water, skimming the surface like a nimble water spider racing its own reflection in the silver of sunshine that had shattered on impact. She looked very peaceful.

“It made me mad, what Mrs. Blackwall did,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“I meant what I said in that letter,” she added boldly. “I will be missin’ you this summer. Sometimes I wish school wouldn’t take off for the summer.”

“Yeah, well, me, too. Sometimes,” I agreed. “Especially after workin’ all day in the fields.”

“I don’t have to work in any fields.”

“You’re lucky and just don’t know it,” I said. “Gets hot.”

“I watch the workers come in sometimes, down at Dupree’s daddy’s store,” she sympathized. “They look all used up, or somethin’.”

“You didn’t have to mention Dupree,” I replied cynically. “You not his girl, are you?”

Megan’s face snapped up. She was angry. “No. Where’d you hear that?”

“What he said,” I told her. “That’s what he said, and Sonny and Wayne said the same thing.”

“Well, they’re liars, that’s what. I wouldn’t snap a ringer for Dupree Hixon.”

Megan’s denial of Dupree pleased me, made me alive and joyful.

“You mean that?” I asked.

“Of course I mean it. I don’t know how you could even think such a thing.” Her eyes sparkled with anger. She threw the stick to one side and stood.

“Well, you don’t have to go gettin’ mad at me,” I said. “I didn’t do nothing but tell you what they said.”

“It’s not true.”

“All right. You say it’s not, it’s not.”

“You don’t know anything, do you, Colin Wynn? If I got a boyfriend, it’s you. I bought you enough Three Musketeers to prove that, I guess, and it was me who wrote that letter and got caught at it. Me.”

“Well, don’t get mad at me,” I said, standing. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

“I got to go,” Megan said quickly. “Mama’ll be wonderin’ where I am if I don’t get home.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

Megan paused and turned to look at me. “Well, are you?” she asked.

“Am I what?”

“Are you my boyfriend or not? I don’t want to go spendin’ the whole summer not knowing.”

“Uh—yeah—yeah. I reckon. Ah—what—what am I supposed to do?”

“Do? You don’t have to do anything. Goodbye.” She pivoted and walked briskly away. Then she stopped and again turned to me.

“Uh—goodbye,” I replied feebly.

“I just wanted you to know something,” she said. “You remember when I won that last spelling bee for being able to spell the word ‘semicolon’? Well, I remembered how to spell it because I broke it down and sounded it out to say ‘See-Me-Colin.’ And that’s all I want you to do. See me. Sometimes when I think you don’t notice
me, it hurts so much, it—it
burns. And—and—goodbye.”

See-Me-Colin. See-Me-Colin.
Megan wanted me—
me
—to notice her.

I ran the two miles home. Daddy whipped me for missing the school bus. I didn’t care. It didn’t hurt. I had been to the Jordan River and the Jordan River could cure pain even before it happened.

8

FOR THREE WEEKS I OBEYED the probation that had been approved as punishment. School was closed and we worked the fields from early to late, from gray smoke of morning to gray smoke of night. It was hard work, hard and silent and tediously slow. But it gave dreamers a chance to dream, and in the repetitive swing of a hoe or the again-and-again curl of dirt sliding off the sweep of a plow, I began to realize wondrous changes were taking place in my life. I was older and I had wrestled with the sensitivity of caring for someone who did not belong to my north and south, east and west isolation. The REA was coming, and its thin wires would knit us into the fabric of the huge glittering costume, Earth. We watched the survey crews, with their tripods and funny little telescopes, and hand signals that said, “No, no. To the left. Too much. Ah, that’s it. That’s perfect.” At night, sitting in the orange-yellow light of a kerosene lamp, we would talk about electric stoves and electric refrigerators (“It’ll be a Frigidaire,” declared Mother) and running water and an indoor bathroom, and we imagined our home beaming and twinkling with light, a Christmas-tree home in dark nights.

Sundays were gloomy, painful days during the three weeks of probation. Wesley and Freeman and R. J. and Paul and Otis and Jack would ride with Dover or William Pruitte to Harrison to watch Alvin pitch baseball, and they would return home to tell splendid tales of Alvin’s exploits. Their stories hurt more than not being with them.

Wesley must have sensed my longing. On the Sunday of the fourth week of probation, he said, “C’mon. You can go with us.”

“Wait a minute, Wes,” objected Paul. “He’s got today left before he can tag along. That’s what we said.”

“Well, let’s cut it short,” Wesley replied. “Bein’ out of school, and all that, he’s not been with anybody to play with.”

“Well…” Paul stammered.

“Aw, let him come along,” agreed Freeman. “Alvin’s goin’ after his third no-hitter today.”

“All right,” Paul muttered, “but it’s not exactly right.”

*

As the Harrison Hornets’ only pitcher, Alvin had become a legend in less than a month. William’s prediction had been conservative: Alvin was probably the greatest pitcher of baseballs in the entire world, not just the state of Georgia.

According to Freeman, Alvin’s accomplishments in baseball were due only in part to The Secret. More important was the inspiration of an unusual bargain.

As Freeman interpreted it, Alvin’s career in baseball almost ended before it started. Alvin had begun dating the daughter of a Holiness preacher, discovering a new meaning to the
scriptural admonition about God moving in mysterious ways. Alvin, said Freeman, did not know the difference between a holy twitch and a hug. He was inclined to become disturbed with either intention, and the preacher’s daughter was given to holy twitches.

William and Fred Thaxton, who managed the Harrison Hornets, became distraught over the thought of losing Alvin to all-day church services when Sunday games were being played, and they plotted to divert Alvin’s attention.

And that is how Delores Fisk became involved.

Delores Fisk was known for her talent of making men trail after her like a beagle after a rabbit. She was pretty and sassy and loved to make men blush with embarrassment the way she cooed around them, the way she winked and blew kisses. The boys called her a flirt, even to her face. It was a word that made her laugh.

When Fred explained to her the plight of the Harrison baseball team—the possibility of losing Alvin to the preacher’s daughter—Delores agreed to help the cause. She began to flirt with Alvin, telling him she couldn’t wait to see him at the ball games. Alvin forgot about holy twitches and hugs.

Fred later thanked her for her cooperation.

“Well, he’s not much to look at,” Delores reportedly told Fred, “but he’s kind of cute when he’s trying to say something.”

“Yeah,” Fred reportedly agreed. “You couldn’t call him a ballplayer by lookin’ at him, that’s for sure. Alvin’s so skinny you could x-ray him with a flashlight, but he’s something else when he’s throwin’ the ball.”

And then Delores proudly announced her bargain: “I told him, for every no-hitter he threw, we could go on a date.”

Fred was ecstatic. “Honey, you better get you a calendar. Alvin’s gonna be livin’ at your place,” he said. Reportedly. According to Freeman.

*

I suspected there was some truth in Freeman’s tale. Alvin was a changed man, even in warm-ups. His fastball was a lethal weapon. His curve and screwball had three breaks—30 degrees, 60 degrees, and 90 degrees. His knuckleball looked drunk; it would run up to a hitter, stop, tap dance, take a bow, and flutter back to the catcher’s mitt like a butterfly landing on a honeysuckle. He developed a pitch he called the Buckdance, one called the Gee-Haw, one called the Balloon. And Alvin had control. I swear he could have thrown in the strike zone of a boll weevil if the boll weevil could have hoisted a bat. It was easier to hit a flying gnat in the tail with a Red Ryder BB gun than it was to hit Alvin.

But there was even more astonishing proof of Alvin Bond’s greatness as a baseball pitcher. After his warm-up, Alvin waited and chatted to Freeman and Wesley and me as Winslow Dees, his catcher, unlaced his catcher’s mitt and put a thawed-out steak in the lining.