And the lawyer said what does that got to do with anything? And I said well, I don’t know what happened in that house, mister, but I guess if there was a little kid left alive in there, it was probably because Blub was there, because Blub wouldn’t let nobody hurt no kid. Blub wouldn’t hurt a fly. He just follows people around, I said. He ain’t got a lot of friends. He just follows people around.
Rev. Jenkins, he testified too. He’s a troublemaker but he did speak up for Blub. And Blub’s mother, Miss Rosa, testified. She mostly sat in the witness stand and busted into tears. After it was done, I never wanted to see Blub no more, not even that day. But they told me to stick around when the jury left the room. They might need me again. They said it wouldn’t take long.
It didn’t neither. The jury came back in a couple of hours. First they announced their verdict on the other kid, Blub’s new friend. They asked him to stand up. The judge read the verdict from a piece of paper, which said “death penalty.” He made each juror, one at a time, stand up and actually say the word “death” out loud. He said it was the law. They done it. Each one. Some of them had tears in their eyes when they done it. But not all of ’em. Blub’s friend didn’t make a sound nor sweat it when they called it out on him neither. Didn’t move a muscle till he was told to sit again, which he did.
Then Blub was asked to stand. He got up shaking and sweating. And I remember thinking, This is all going too fast for me. Seem like just yesterday me and Blub was at Mr. Johnson’s grocery store ordering Now and Laters with me translating for him, and now Blub’s standing before a judge, about to . . . I couldn’t deal with it. I looked at him shaking and sweating, and seen how big he’d grown in jail, just a tall, good-looking man. And I wished then that Sissie could see him now, see how Blub had grown, how big and tall and slim he got, handsome in his suit, like a movie star. She had begged me to sneak her to the trial, but I kept my word to my ma. “You ain’t never gonna see him again,” I told her, “so you ought best forget him.”
The jury sent over a note to the judge, and he called the lawyers over to him, and the lawyers talked with him for a while. Then the jury sent over a second note, and the judge read that. And then the jury sent over a third note, and the judge wrote down something on a piece of paper, and then he read from the piece of paper in his hand.
The judge said this man is gonna get forty years to life.
When I got home, I told my ma what happened and she said, “Don’t tell your sister,” but of course Sissie dragged every bit of it outta me. She was quiet for a few days afterwards, and then we just rolled on. Winter came, and then spring, and high school came, and The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band kept rehearsing, and just like that Blub was gone from The Bottom.
Myself, I tried to forget him. When I had to walk past his house, I’d circle the block and go the long way. When I seen his mother going back and forth to work and ordering food from Mr. Woo’s, I’d avoid her, or sometimes I’d wave, but she hardly seen me and kept walking. And then after a while things got back to like they always were. And they went along normal again for a while—until Thursday the cat vanished.
He just never came back one day. We was used to that. Sometimes he’d disappear for days, even weeks at a time. That was normal. But this time he just never came back. Sissie put out food for him and called and called and watched out for him through the window, but the food stayed there. A month passed. Two months. Three months. Then the snow came, and after that I figured he was gone for good and forgot all about him, till one afternoon that cold winter I was coming home from rehearsal in the snow and passed by Thresher Park and seen Sissie in there at the sycamore tree in the middle of the park scratching away at the tree trunk.
I seen her from the sidewalk, at a distance, through the fence, and backed off and waited by the fence out of sight till she was done with whatever she was doing. When she left I went up to the tree and seen where Blub had scratched Thursday’s name, then scratched her name underneath Thursday’s name to make her feel better.
And now she had scratched Blub’s name under hers, with a plus sign on it.
THURSDAY THE CAT
SISSIE
BLUB
4
GOAT
When I was little, I used to look out my window and see a little boy running behind a man on a bicycle every morning. I seen that boy running behind that bike every day before I even knew him, just some crazy boy running behind a man pedaling a bicycle. He’d run behind the man all the way to the corner, and when the man got to the dirt road that runned up the hill and out of The Bottom going towards downtown, that boy would stop running and watch him ride off, then turn and run to school. That’s my friend Goat. He plays drums in The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band. The man on the bicycle is his daddy, who everybody calls Mr. Popcorn.
Goat is a dark-skinned boy who walks pigeon-toed and laughs all the time and likes to make jokes. He’s a pretty good drummer for somebody who’s twelve, but he plays too fast. Everything Goat does is fast. He talks fast. He eats fast. But mostly he runs fast. He’s the fastest kid in all The Bottom. Everybody knows Goat got speed. I think he got it from running after his daddy all the time.
I don’t know why they call his daddy Mr. Popcorn, for I have never seen him eat no popcorn. Goat told me his daddy’s real name is Irving Evans. He’s a little, chocolate-skinned man with shiny eyes and a big smile. Mr. Popcorn works way downtown in a yard where there’s big oil trucks that say “Waste Oil” on the side. He rides his bike to work every day, and he works them pedals on that thing good and keeps it moving. It’s a dandy bike. It’s red and blue with stingray handlebars on it and a banana seat. It’s put together from a bunch of different bike parts from Mr. Popcorn’s yard. He got a ton of junk in that yard. Bricks, bike parts, tires, and real chickens. He even had a goat in there once—a real goat, which is how Goat got his nickname, for he used to have to feed it—but the city made him get rid of it. That whole family is country.
Mr. Popcorn got three boys: Minnie Jug, Tory, and Goat, and they is all fast. Minnie Jug is the oldest. He’s like a bigger, meaner Goat. He stole my bike once and it would’ve ended up in Mr. Popcorn’s junkyard until Goat told me, “I seen my brother Minnie Jug riding your bike.” I ran out and caught Minnie Jug on it and he said, “Oh I just borrowed it,” and he gived it back to me along with a dime so I wouldn’t tell my mother. Minnie Jug played baseball with us sometimes. He could hit that ball a mile too, but he quit when he was a teenager and got too old.
Next come Tory. Tory likes girls and cigarettes. We used to call him “half boy, half man,” ’cause Tory had a mustache and beard when he was only twelve—or said he was twelve. He was in my same class but I ain’t seen him in a while. They say he’s in Job Corps, which is like jail except all the kids ain’t bad. I asked Goat once, “Where’s Tory?” and Goat just shrugged and said, “Tory messed up,” which makes me think Tory ain’t in no Job Corps after all.
Goat is the youngest of the three. He ain’t like his big brothers. He don’t steal. He don’t fight. He don’t chase girls. He ain’t never mad. He just runs. I never seen nobody run like Goat. It’s like a different person climb into him when he runs. He leans forward and gets low and just flies along like a diesel train.
Everybody knows Goat is fast. People from all around The Bottom come to race him. He raced Bunny’s daddy last summer and beat him and he was only eleven. Bunny’s daddy got mad and said, “Gimme a half a block head start next time and if you win, I’ll give you twenty dollars. But if you lose, you pay me a dollar.”
“I ain’t got no dollar,” Goat said. But Goat gave him a head start anyway and took his money. One of The Sixes, a boy named Junior, came around once and said, “I can beat Goat.” Junior’s sixteen and plays football in high school. He’s a quiet, light-skinned boy with big, thick leg muscles. When The Six beat us at something, Junior’s one of
them that does it the most. Last Halloween when they beat us in our yearly egg fight, Junior ran me down and hit me with an egg so hard it felt like a bullet. Well, Junior raced Goat and got beat, too.
Last spring Goat got famous. They had a big track meet out in Falls Point, with the white kids and everything, and they threw Goat in there and he beat everybody in the city in the hundred-yard dash except for one guy. He didn’t even have sneakers. He borrowed Dex’s sneakers. Only problem was he didn’t have no birth certificate, so they threw out his win. Our school didn’t have no track coach, we just had Miss McIntyre. She teaches English, and she saw Goat running around the schoolyard and said, “That boy’s fast,” and when she heard about a track meet over in Falls Point she put him in her car and drove him over there to race in it. After he came in second place they asked Miss McIntyre, “Where’s his birth certificate?” and Miss McIntyre said, “I don’t have no birth certificate for him,” so he didn’t get no medal because they couldn’t prove he was twelve.
Goat was disappointed and told Miss McIntyre he wasn’t going back to run no more. But Miss McIntyre said, “Go home and get your birth certificate. We’ll have it the next time.”
“There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Goat said.
“Why?”
“My ma ain’t got no birth certificate,” Goat said.
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
Miss McIntyre’s a nice lady, but she don’t know nothing about The Bottom. She’s young and brown-skinned. She wears nice dresses and has nice glasses and a button nose that’s so cute. Sometimes when I fall asleep at night I think about Miss McIntyre. She does her hair in an Afro like Cicely Tyson, that famous actress I seen on TV once, or Angela Davis, who I don’t know exactly who she is but they say she’s got guts and ain’t scared of white people. One time my sister Sissie asked Miss McIntyre, “Where’s your perm?” and Miss McIntyre gived her a book with a picture of a lady named Harriet Tubman who freed the slaves or some such kind of thing. Sissie looked at the picture and said, “She ain’t got no perm neither,” and Miss McIntyre got mad.
Miss McIntyre couldn’t get it out of her head about Goat not getting his medal and not having his birth certificate. She kept bothering him about bringing it in and he kept saying “I forgot,” so one day she said, “I’m gonna write your mother a note.”
“Write all you want. It ain’t gonna do no good,” Goat said.
“Why not?” she said.
“She ain’t worrying about no birth certificate,” Goat said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
I don’t know where Miss McIntyre live, but she sure don’t live in The Bottom, because that very weekend she came to The Bottom and drove right through our baseball field.
It ain’t a real field. We call it The Triangle. It’s actually three dirt streets that come together at the bottom of a hill where you first enter The Bottom. The Triangle is perfect for baseball, but it’s also the only entrance to The Bottom if you driving. Most cars roar through there because the drivers is either from The Bottom and wanna get home—or they ain’t from The Bottom and wanna get home in one piece.
Miss McIntyre creeped through there at ten miles an hour. In a shiny little red car, on a hot Saturday, with her pretty little purse on the passenger seat next to her and the window open so somebody could reach in there and snatch it. We was playing The Six when she come through, and she bumped right over home plate where they was and stopped.
All them Sixes stared at her when she stopped, setting there in her little red car wearing one of her nice school dresses, squinting through the windshield looking for addresses—there ain’t none in The Bottom—with her side window wide open, basically begging somebody, anybody, to snatch her purse off that seat and make themself some money. I think they was so surprised to see someone so stupid come through there it froze ’em. Them Sixes—Tito, Toy Boy, Junior, Lightbulb—stood there holding their bats with their eyes popping out their heads as she sat there a minute.
Then quick as you can tell it, she was on the move again, roaring off home plate. She turned one way, then the other, backed up once, then rolled over the pitcher’s mound where Bunny was standing holding the ball—she almost hit him—then kept going past him and rumbled over second base where Dex was, then bumped past me at shortstop, then finally drove out to left field where Goat was.
The left field of The Triangle ain’t really no left field. It’s really Parsons Road. It’s a pretty far distance from home plate. But that’s where The Six mostly clobber the ball when we pitch it to them. That’s why we put Goat out there. He runs down their gigantic home runs and catches ’em for outs. But he gets bored out there sometimes and stands around daydreaming, staring up at the sky.
He was doing just that when Miss McIntyre drove past him. She was squinting with her glasses, swiveling her head back and forth looking for addresses, and had just about passed him when he glanced in the car—then done a double take, when he seen who it was.
He stared as she passed, and when her car reached the corner of Parsons and turn left towards his house, he dropped his glove and said, “I gotta go,” and took off towards home.
That ended the game right there. We can’t beat them without Goat. Plus it started a fight. Each team switched gloves when they took the field because not everybody had a glove, and Goat was using Lightbulb’s glove. He had it in his hand when Miss McIntyre drove past and he threw Lightbulb’s glove to the ground and ran off. Lightbulb saw Goat running and said, “One of you girls better bring my glove,” and Bunny who was pitching for us said, “Get your own glove, caveman,” and we laughed, and them Sixes charged, which meant we had to show them Sixes who’s boss. We did what The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band does best. We scattered quick.
Bunny and Beanie and the rest of them made it safe to Bunny’s house, while me and Dex took off for Mrs. Wilson’s yard to cut through and catch up with Goat. We had never seen no teacher in The Bottom before, especially not one so pretty like Miss McIntyre. We loved us some Miss McIntyre.
We got there just in time to see Goat beat Miss McIntyre to his house. Goat acted like he ain’t seen her and zipped inside the front door and slammed it behind him just as she pulled up. By the time she parked and got out and walked through all them bike parts and weeds and chickens to knock at the front door, that house seemed quiet as a mouse.
My cousin Herbert lives two doors away from Goat and his family ain’t never home. So me and Dex crouched behind the steps at Cousin Herbert’s house to listen in and see what would happen.
Miss McIntyre knocked at the door. Nobody come, so she knocked again louder. Finally a voice hollered out, “We gave at the office!” That was Goat talking, trying to sound like a grown-up.
“I need to speak to you, Seymour,” Miss McIntyre said.
Me and Dex laughed. It was funny to hear Goat’s real name spoke in The Bottom.
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens,” Goat said.
Well, that just got Miss McIntyre stirred up. She banged at the door harder this time and then finally the door cracked opened and Goat’s mother, Mrs. Shays, peeped out the side of it.
I don’t know Mrs. Shays well, but I seen her a lot when my grandma died because she works in the cafeteria at the old Carver Hospital. She’s a tall, brown lady who keeps her hair neat permed and got a wide nose. She peeked out the side of the door with her eyes and said, “What he done did now?”
“Are you Seymour’s mother?” Miss McIntyre asked.
“If you mean is I the someone who teaches him not to brush his teeth and clean his nose out in public, yes, I am his mother,” Mrs. Shays said. “But if you from social services and come out here fending and proving and pretending you know everything, which must be a terrible strain on a person, then I ain’t nobody.”
“So you are his mother, then?” Miss McIntyre said.
“If it look like buzzard and smell like buzzard, miss, it ain’t catfish.”
“Does that mean you his mother?”
“Is you social services or not?”
“Course not!” Miss McIntyre said. “I am his teacher.”
“Well, whatever he done wrong, I’ll straighten him out,” Mrs. Shays said, and she slammed the door shut.
Miss McIntyre banged on the door again. Nobody opened it, so she hollered out, “Seymour’s done nothing wrong.”
Mrs. Shays wouldn’t open the door. But she hollered from inside, “If he ain’t done no wrong, stop banging at my door.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You hurting my door, miss. I paid for it. Git along, please.”
“This is about a scholarship!”
“A what?”
“Money!”
That done it. The door cracked open. Mrs. Shays stood there with her cafeteria uniform on. There wasn’t no screen door, just some steps leading up to it, so when Mrs. Shays opened the door full, she was standing above Miss McIntyre like a giant. Behind her the house was dark. Goat’s people don’t have electric most times. Mostly they light their house with candles and flashlights, but nobody makes fun of them ’cause Mr. Popcorn ain’t the only one in The Bottom who can’t pay his electric.
“Miss, he didn’t meant to steal no scholarship,” Mrs. Shays said. “You ain’t got to get him arrested. I already told you I’ll clear him of it. No need to call no police.”
It occurred to me then that Mrs. Shays didn’t know what a scholarship was. Miss McIntyre said: “He didn’t steal a scholarship. He needs one.”
“Well, I can’t afford it, whatever it is.”
“It’s a free education,” Miss McIntyre said. Then she explained about how Goat was the second fastest runner in the whole city and should get a medal for that track meet he did in Falls Point and maybe could get into a special high school for free college because he ran so fast.