Wolf Whistle (19 page)

Roy Dale sure did laugh, whoo boy, Roy Dale got a kick out of all these jokes. What was even better, though, was when he found somebody who hadn't heard one of them, then he could tell the joke his ownself, make somebody else laugh, too. Now that was something. “Stole a gin fan and was trying to swim across the
lake
with it!” he would say.

Everybody was laughing. Roy Dale even made Baby Raby laugh, no telling what she'd be letting him do next.

Other new information crept in, from time to time, during the day. Lord Montberclair and Mr. Gregg had been arrested for murder.

Roy Dale kept on laughing so much he didn't think about Lord Montberclair and Mr. Gregg. He didn't think about his mama coming back home. He didn't even think about the body in Roebuck being the same as the one Runt had told him about, which seemed like it must be a white person, for some reason.

About all Roy Dale thought about was that he wouldn't have an arrow-catching partner at practice this afternoon.

Soon after the last bell of the day, the locker room in the
gym, out behind the schoolhouse, started to fill up with boys, arrow catchers and archers.

Roy Dale looked around, hoping Sweet or Sugar might have come to school late, sometime during the day, after study hall, maybe Coach Heard would let them practice, after all.

Roy Dale's quiver and bow lay in the bow rack of his locker, where he'd stored them first thing this morning after he got to school. He touched each with a secret intimacy, tenderness, and then he rattled them against the boards of the bow rack in a manly, careless way, just in case anybody got the wrong idea.

He sat down on the wooden bench in front of the lockers and started to take off his shoes. The weight-lifting set, barbells and dumbbells and extra iron plates and the wrench, lay in a corner nearby.

A bucktoothed kid name Phillip, the team manager, fussed around the players with an equipment kit, prepping ankles or wrists or rib cages with Tuff-Skin, sticky yellow stuff that he smeared on with a brush to protect the skin from tape burn, and then applying strips of adhesive tape, which he tore off neatly in short, uniform strips.

He changed broken cleats, if need be, he issued new equipment, bowstrings, or arrows, he arranged times with players who wanted analgesic rubdowns after practice.

The concrete floor of the locker room seemed always to be damp and to hold a smell of sweat and smelly feet and dirty socks and unwashed jockey straps, and maybe even urine, from the toilet, which sometimes got stopped up and overflowed. Somebody really ought to mop up this place with Pine-Sol, once in a while.

The shower stall, with its two drizzly spigots and no door or partition, stood just to the right of Roy Dale's locker. Roy Dale knew he ought to take a shower after practice each day, like the other boys—he especially knew it today, because his feet smelled so bad, Baby Raby was right, there was no getting around it—but he was ashamed of the way he looked when he was naked. He had a bad hernia, and one of his balls hung down real low. There was just no privacy, good grief.

The locker room was crowded now, there was a lot of loud talk, some grab-ass and towel-snapping. Boys were naked, or getting out of their street clothes, or putting on the lightweight, loose-fitting practice uniforms for catching or shooting. Some were talking about the new eye-protection that might be required by law, others were talking about girls. Baby Raby's name came up a couple of times, mainly references to her breasts.

Dress-out moved along, same old stuff.

Smoky Viner was there, as always, good Lord, a boy
with a thick neck and a hard head. Nobody could stand Smoky Viner.

Smoky was ramming his head into the wall, like a bull, you never saw anything like it, blammo, the plaster was flying, smack, the doorframe splintered, bong, a metal stanchion rang like a farm bell. You couldn't keep anything nice with Smoky Viner around.

Ramming his head into the wall just tickled the pure-dee shit out of Smoky Viner.

For a while nobody said anything, and then when Smoky didn't stop for a long time, and the smell of plaster dust started to get stronger than the smell of sweat or piss, somebody said, “Smoky, for God's sake, man!”

Smoky Viner was grinning like a billy goat.

Smoky said, “One time I butted down a shithouse, turned it over on its side.”

Somebody said, “Well, that's good, Smoky, that's real good, that's something to be proud of.”

Everybody hated Smoky Viner.

Smoky Viner said, “They ought to be some kind of butting contest, they ought to be some kind of high school sport for butting.”

Somebody said, “Smoky, you gone end up in Whitfield, honest to God, boy.”

Smoky butted the stanchion again, bong. He said, “They ought to be some kind of high school sport.”

Before long the topic of conversation turned to the dead nigger, it was bound to happen, people had been talking about it, joking about it, anyway, all day long.

The same jokes started up again now, and they were still funny, too, vacation days for finding a dead one, one who stole a gin fan and tried to swim across the lake with it.

Roy Dale was having himself a good time. He was shy to tell a joke in a crowd, so he was quiet, he didn't say much, but he was laughing, boy, oh yes sir.

Then somebody said something that shut the mouth of everybody standing in the locker room. The words froze the smile on Roy Dale's face and caused it to crack and fall right off.

“I'm for the nigger.”

That's what somebody said.

Huh? Who said that? What did you say?

On a sudden impulse, Roy Dale turned to Phillip, the bucktoothed boy who was the team's manager.

He said, “Hey, Phillip, you know what we ought to do, we ought to sign us a blood oath together, a pact, you know, like Indians, or pirates, we ought to promise one another, no lie, no smiles, no kidding around, that wherever we end up in life, right here or far away, or when we're young or when we're old, don't matter, that you'll get you some braces to straighten out them buckteeth and I'll get
my ball shortened, okay, you want to go in with me on this deal, want to be partners?”

What had got into Roy Dale's head, saying a thing like that!

Phillip looked at Roy Dale like he thought Roy Dale was probably going to end up in Whitfield with Smoky Viner.

Roy Dale said, “Sorry. Just kidding.”

Phillip went back to tape and Tuff-Skin.

Except nobody really went back to anything. The words were still in the air.

Did Roy Dale hear those words? He must have.

Everybody shut up. Nobody even noticed what Roy Dale had said to Phillip.

Who said he was for the nigger?

It was Smoky Viner.

Smoky Viner said, “It ain't right.”

Maybe it was a dream, that would be one explanation.

It wasn't a dream.

Smoky Viner said, “Y'all ought to be shamed of yourself, laughing about a boy got killed.”

Roy Dale thought, Yeah, I better take me a shower today, I think I might better start taking me a shower most every day from now on, feet smelling bad as they do.

The room was still very quiet, no one was moving, or scarcely breathing.

Some time passed like this.

Roy Dale wondered why he hadn't known enough to say what crazy Smoky Viner said. Roy Dale even had a daddy that warned him, and he still didn't know enough. Roy Dale was laughing like a durn hyena, that's all Roy Dale was doing. Roy Dale realized he hated Smoky Viner worse than ever.

Finally, in a low voice, almost a whisper, somebody said, “Uh, Smoky, it was a, you know, white lady. A colored boy and a white lady.” This was gently said, a means of assuring that the record was straight.

Smoky Viner said, “It ain't right.”

Somebody said, “We ain't said it was right, Smoky. We just kidding around.”

Smoky Viner said, “I laughed too, I couldn't help it.”

Well.

Smoky Viner said, “I hope I live long enough to forgive myself for that laugh.”

Roy Dale thought, Maybe I'll ask Runt about an operation to correct this long ball, the hernia. I don't have to wait until I'm old. Runt might could come up with the money, if I asked him.

Smoky Viner said, “I'm shamed of myself. I want to die, I'm so shamed of myself.”

There weren't any more jokes. Everybody was about all dressed-out and ready for practice, anyway.

They gathered up their equipment, they rattled their arrows, they strung their bows, they moved out of the locker room and onto the practice field in ones and twos.

There was one more thing that happened that day that Roy Dale would always remember.

The team was out on the wide, green field. The sun had been out for a few days and was warm on their faces.

Roy Dale said, “Coach Heard, Sweet and Sugar neither one ain't here today.”

Coach Heard said, “Well, I heard, you know, I heard about the bad news.”

Roy Dale said, “Bad news.”

Coach said, “Them finding that floater and all.”

Roy Dale said, “I was just, you know, wondering—”

Coach Heard said, “How about I pair you off with Smoky today, Smoky Viner ain't got no regular partner. That's the ticket, it'd do him good, too, you take him up under your wing for a day, build up his confidence maybe, sure would, do him some good.”

Nobody wanted to be on a team with Smoky Viner, even on a regular day. Smoky Viner couldn't catch an arrow for shit. On the best day of his life, Smoky Viner couldn't catch an arrow.

Roy Dale said, “You want me to team up with Smoky Viner?”

Coach Heard said, “Well, yeah, Roy Dale, I do, I think
I would like for you to do that today.”

Coach Heard said, in a confidential way, “Ease up a little on Smoky Viner, you know, take a little bow off that string, won't you, Roy Dale, he ain't real skilled at this game. He's all tore up today, anyway, you know.”

In Roy Dale's hand today the bow was a weightless thing, like air, it was so easy to draw to the limit, full forty pounds.

The arrow, when it flew, was, as he had known it would be, all his rage, his emptiness and loss, outward, outward, forever away from his heart. It was mothers gone off to Kosiesko with strangers, grandparents named Cyrus and Janie, graves to earn a family's daily bread.

To Smoky Viner the arrow seemed to emerge from another world into his own. It came towards him, mysterious, whistling, bustling, lustering invisibility, point and shaft and fletch, sucking up, as it flew, all the available oxygen from the atmosphere and into its hungry, insatiable self.

The atmosphere rarified.

Birds fell from the air.

Cattle toppled over in a field.

Car motors stalled on the highway.

The body of the Bobo-child, dressed in a heavy garment of fish and turtles and violent death, reversed all its decay, and flesh became firm once more, eyes snapped back into
sockets and became bright, bones unbroke themselves, feet became swift, laughter erupted like music, and bad manners and disrespect and a possessive disdain for a woman became mere child's play, a normal and decent testing of adolescent limits in a hopeful world.

The arrow hit Smoky Viner in the dead middle of his forehead.

Maybe Roy Dale could learn to call Runt “Daddy,” he believed he could try. Maybe he could learn to speak words of love to him, though he felt nothing in his heart like love. Maybe he could speak to his mother honest words of rage for leaving him behind. Maybe he could believe that his vile laughter at the death of a child, like himself, did not eliminate him from human hope, by its villainy.

The arrow that hit Smoky Viner's head was a “blunt.” It struck Smoky Viner so hard that the arrow collapsed upon itself, this density of meaning, and splintered a million ways at once, throwing shards of wood and a spray of sawdust around Smoky Viner's head like the muddy, chaotic rings of Saturn.

Smoky Viner saw little of this. Smoky Viner saw only a flock of tiny bluebirds flying around and around his head, cheep-cheep-cheeping some familiar tune, perhaps the lullaby that Dumbo's mother sang to the baby elephant in the cartoon movie Smoky Viner saw one time, he was just not sure, good night, little one, good night.

Everyone else on the field saw only a miracle.

They saw Smoky Viner, for once in his life, still standing but knocked unconscious by a blow to the head.

He teetered, he began to fall.

They saw a boy with courage to speak words that they had not had courage even to think.

They saw hope.

For themselves, for the Delta, for Mississippi, maybe the world.

Coach Heard hollered, “Roy Dale!”

Smoky Viner toppled over, like a tree felled in a forest.

Coach Heard hollered, “Smoky Viner!”

Roy Dale emptied his quiver onto the ground, the seven remaining arrows, and found the steel-tipped arrow among them, the one that he drove into his wall at night.

He separated it from the rest. He held it in both hands in front of him. He broke it across his knee, crack, and flung the two pieces aside.

He said, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!”

A
RROW
C
ATCHER
began to fill up with strangers.

They seemed to be everywhere. They wore ties, some of them, in this heat. They loosened their ties and opened their shirt collars. They took off their jackets and carried them flung over one shoulder. They took a good look at everything. They looked like people visiting the zoo.

Every time the Greyhound pulled up to the curb in front of the Arrow Cafe, and the bus doors whooshed open, more new strangers got off. Most of them were white men, with suitcases in the compartment beneath the bus. Some carried leather valises off the bus with them. Some even carried small typewriters in hard cases.

They stood on the curbside. They looked around them, right and left.

These were the reporters from
Look
and
The New York Times,
all the papers and magazines from outside the South.