The Year the Lights Came On (7 page)

The Weems children did not eat in the lunchroom.

The Weems children did not eat lunch.

*

And on this screaming, burning, spring-summer day, Shirley Weems was standing alone at recess when Dupree and Sonny and five or six others began to circle her and sing:

“Shirley, Shirley, I been thinkin’,

What would keep your feet from stinkin’…

A barrel of water and a cake of soap,

Put ’em in and let ’em soak…”

Walter Weems, who was eight and a first-grader for the second year, rushed up to Dupree and kicked him. “Quit it,” he yelled, his voice a shrill bird’s cry. “Leave Sister alone. Leave her alone.”

Dupree whirled and slapped Walter viciously across the face. Walter fell and rolled over the hard clay of the outside basketball court.

“Damn you, Dupree Hixon!”

It was Wesley, from in front of the canning plant. His voice was guttural, an animal’s voice, an explosion of agony. Freeman knew what would happen; if Wesley resorted to foul language,
it always ended in a fight. Freeman reached for him, but Wesley ripped away and bolted the distance separating him from Dupree. Sonny stepped in front of Dupree, cutting off Wesley’s rush.

“What’d you think you’re gonna do, hick?” snapped Sonny.

Wesley cried from deep in his chest, caught the larger Sonny by his shirt, and lifted him off the ground. He threw Sonny to one side and hit Dupree three times before Dupree could lift his arms. Wayne Heath circled quickly behind Wesley and kicked him in the lower back and Wesley fell forward as someone else hit him on the ear.

I tackled Wayne and turned him, grabbed his hair, and bit into his shoulder. Wayne jerked and fell, tossing his head wildly. I was on him like a tick. He bucked and rolled, and I bit deeper.

“Bite a plug out,” Freeman yelled gleefully, as he threw bodies aside and pulled Wesley away from the pounding. I could tell by his voice that Freeman was proud of my fighting style.

“Let me alone,” Wesley commanded and Freeman dropped him.

Freeman laughed. “Hey, boy. We got us a fight on our hands.” He hit Ted Prichard and Ted fell in a lump. “Where’s R. J.?”

Wayne clubbed at me with his fist and I wrapped my legs around him and started squeezing. His eyes crossed and he began to slobber. I heard someone yell, “Colin. Sonny’s got a rock.” I looked up and saw Sonny standing above me, saw the hammer swing of his arm, and I felt something cracking against the back of my neck. I released Wayne. The sky turned black, then scarlet, then silver. I could feel blood running down my neck. I could hear Freeman directing R. J. and Otis and Paul, like a general: “Hit ’em! Hit ’em!” And then I heard Wesley’s pained cry: “That’s my little brother…”

The sky turned black again and I saw someone running inside the corridor of a long, blinding-white building. The muscles of my legs tried to lift me, but couldn’t. I fell forward on my hands and the running figure in the corridor of the long, blinding-white building flashed into focus: I was that running figure and I wondered where I was and why I was there. The blackness rolled into my head like a tornado. There was a thunderous, deafening sound, then no sound, then a frightening, loud, sustained whistle. I could feel the blood circling around my shoulder, and then the familiar touch of a familiar someone, and I knew Lynn was on her knees, cradling me, rocking me in her arms, and crying. “He’s gonna die. He’s gonna die,” she sobbed, swabbing at the stream of blood with her dress.

“Shut up, Lynn,” I whispered through dry lips.

The terrible blackness returned and, for the first time in my life, the thought of dying
was
real—clouds enveloping me, lifting me effortlessly. Yes, I thought, that’s what
The
Anderson Independent
meant when it printed that Death Takes So-and-So in its obituary section.

“He’s gonna die,” Lynn repeated. I believed her. Lynn was amazingly perceptive.

“He better get up and do some fightin’,” Freeman ordered, dropping Seymour Hillary with a knee to the stomach. Freeman did not know I had been hit with a rock, and for some ridiculous reason I wanted to laugh. I loved Freeman Boyd. He was incredible.

“He’s been busted with a rock, Freeman,” Lynn screamed angrily.

Freeman turned quickly toward me. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, and turned back to the fight.

I rolled on my shoulder in Lynn’s arms and looked through a blood-blur screen. It seemed every boy in school was fighting,
grade one to grade nine. Otis was pounding on Edward Roach; Freeman was rearranging Dupree’s facial features; R. J. and Jack had five younger kids backed up; Alvin Bond, the tallest boy in school, was slapping at anyone in reach; and Wesley was straddling Sonny on the ground. He had Sonny’s arms pinned and was spitting in his face.

I had never seen such a fight. It was fantastic. Beautiful. Kicking and swinging and pinching and tackling. A haze of red dust was ankle-deep, rising like early morning fog over a river of years of antagonism and frustration. The fight we’d waited for, prayed over, talked about, was finally taking place and I could not join the battle.

Suddenly, teachers appeared. They were everywhere, pulling, pushing, threatening, demanding—until the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side was separated and glaring, group to group, from across ten feet of clay basketball court that somehow perfectly symbolized the difference we had known: they were in the freethrow lane and we were out of bounds.

Wade Simmons was away for the day, attending a meeting in Athens, and the only male teacher present was Dewitt Hollister. He was a cranky old man who thrilled at the thought of administering punishment. It was a sickness with him. He had a ready temper and because he dealt with children he had no fear of challenge. Now, in the aftermath of a riot, his face was blotched in anger and he waved his thin leather belt around like Al “Lash” LaRue in a saloon.

“Now, who started this?” Hollister demanded.

“Wesley Wynn,” shouted Dupree. “Wesley Wynn started it, by granny.”

Freeman took one step toward Dupree and Hollister lashed
him with his belt. Freeman growled and turned to face the second blow. He was in a nasty, fighting mood.

Wesley pulled away from Old Lady Blackwall’s hammerlock. He caught Freeman by the arm and jerked him away from Hollister. Both groups froze. Hollister raised his belt. Wesley did not move. Hollister dropped his arm. Hitting Freeman or me or anyone else was one thing; hitting Wesley was another matter. Wesley defied such punishment.

“This fight started,” Wesley said in a measured, perfectly calm voice, “because Dupree and them was makin’ fun of Shirley Weems. I know that’s wrong and you know it’s wrong. But Shirley’s put up with that since she’s been in school and she’d of taken it again today. We would’ve watched it happen again…” Wesley looked at Shirley and apologized with his eyes. She dropped her head and stood perfectly still.

“That’s not so,” Dupree interrupted. “She’s his girl.”

“Dupree, you keep quiet,” Mrs. Simmons ordered, and even Hollister recognized her presence.

“Well, like I said, it would’ve been just like before,” continued Wesley, “but that little brother of hers, well, he’s not learned what it’s like to be pushed around all the time, and when Dupree slapped him to the ground for tryin’ to help out his sister, well, Mr. Hollister—” Wesley turned to include the other teachers “—and the rest of you grownups, that’s when we don’t take it no longer.”

Hollister studied Wesley from squinted eyes. He looked for help from Mrs. Simmons, but she offered none. No one moved or made a sound.

“You got to be punished, Wesley,” Hollister finally said, raising his arm.

Wesley locked his hands behind his back and lifted his face to Hollister. It was a martyr’s pose; Wesley looked like Daniel surrendering to the Lion’s Den.

“Well, sir, you can punish me if you want to, but I have told you the truth and you know it,” Wesley replied calmly. “You know I don’t lie—never.”

I had never known Wesley to be so direct. I could feel a quiver of pride flutter through Lynn’s body as she stroked my head.

Hollister was struck by the lightning of Wesley’s words. He was speechless, paralyzed from his jowls to his lips. The red left his face and a pale, drained-out expression of defeat crawled around the tight circle of his thin mouth. He had, at last, been challenged, and by a child, and he had lost.

Mrs. Simmons moved to Wesley. She placed both hands on his shoulders and spoke quietly. “Mr. Hollister’s not saying you’ve lied, Wesley. He’s just trying to find out what happened.”

“Yes’m. I know that.”

Hollister was confused. His voice pleaded with Wesley. “But—but, why, Wesley? Why didn’t you just come and tell me or one of the other teachers about Dupree?”

“Because this is between us and them. Because you would’ve let it go. Because you would’ve got mad at me for tattling.”

“No—no, Wesley. I—would have…”

“No, sir. There’s two sides in this school, and any side gets stepped on, it’s us.”

“Wesley, that’s not true. There’s no difference.”

“Yes, sir. There is a difference.”

“What difference, Wesley?” Hollister was begging. “What’re you talking about?”

Wesley stepped back and turned around. He looked at me and I knew it was the Right Time for telling. He looked at Freeman and Freeman smiled; Freeman also knew. He turned back to Hollister.

“Well, Mr. Hollister, you may not believe it,” Wesley said, “but the difference is electricity.”

Hollister looked toward Mrs. Simmons and opened his mouth to speak, but he was suddenly dumb. He gestured with his belt and hands, asking for help.

“Electricity? I don’t understand,” Mrs. Simmons said quietly. “What do you mean about electricity, Wesley?” She had an angel’s way of settling confusion.

“They got electricity and we don’t,” Wesley told her. “That makes them think we’re not worth much. But that’s changin’.”

Dupree spat and wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “What’re you talkin’ about, hick?”

Hollister turned on his heel. “Shut up, Dupree Hixon.”

“We’re getting electricity, too,” Wesley continued. “The REA is comin’ through this year.”

“That’s right,” Freeman added triumphantly.

Dupree laughed. “Electricity’s got nothin’ to do with it. You never gonna be nothing more than what you are, and that’s just a bunch of hicks.”

“Dupree Hixon, you’re going to pay for that remark, young man,” Hollister snapped.

“Mr. Hollister,” Wesley interrupted, “can I say something to Dupree?”

Hollister looked angrily at Wesley. “What?”

Wesley walked easily, confidently, across the divide separating the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side, walked straight to Dupree.

“Dupree,” Wesley began, “the truth is, there’s not much difference between us, not much difference at all. It’s what you think, and what I think, that makes us different. All our lives, we been without some of them things you think were God-given to you. You been acting like we had some kind of disease because we don’t have all those things. But the REA will fix that. The REA will make things a little more equal, and you’ll see what I’m talkin’ about.”

And the fight that had begun with the fury of a hurricane was over. Hollister looped his thin leather belt back through his pants and walked away. Mrs. Simmons helped Lynn and Wesley and Freeman carry me to the lunchroom to have my neck bathed and bandaged. It was not a deep cut, but Mrs. Simmons washed off the dirt from my face and rubbed my back and whispered that she was relieved I was not seriously injured.

As I sat on a table and looked through a lunchroom window, I saw Wesley talking with Shirley and her little brother, who had buried his face in Shirley’s gingham dress. After a moment, Wesley squatted and turned Walter to him and Walter whipped his arms around Wesley’s neck. It was the first time I realized Wesley’s embrace, and in that moment I saw him suddenly go limp, as though something had gone out of him, something the rest of us did not have.

*

Years later, after Wesley had been ordained a minister of the Methodist Church, he would return to Emery to perform burial rites for Walter Weems, because Walter Weems would grow up to face unbearable abuse, and one day, while plowing corn for Howard Wages, he would take a plow line and hang himself in an abandoned house.

6

ON SATURDAY MORNING, Wade Simmons drove over to meet with our father, and the two walked away through the apple orchard to talk privately.

“I’ll bet he’s tellin’ Daddy he’s gonna kick us out of school,” I said.

“He’s not kickin’ us out of school,” counseled Wesley. “He’s just talking. Maybe he wanted to make sure you didn’t get hurt bad. It’s just talk. Teachers love to talk. Anyway, Daddy’s chairman of the board of education. They have to talk about problems with Daddy.”

Wesley tried to sound confident and authoritative. He didn’t. Wade Simmons was not Dewitt Hollister.

“I wonder what would’ve happened if Mr. Simmons had been there,” I said. “What’d you think, Wes?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m glad he was gone.”

“Yeah. Me, too,” agreed Wesley.