He didn’t look at me but tilted his head towards Miss Georgia’s house. “It looks good.”
I nodded. “She liked it. I left our IMF carving.”
He gave a hint of a smile as we went back to toeing the dirt. “I saw.”
Neither of us said anything for a while, but I figured one of us had to bring it up and maybe it was supposed to be me. “Did you get my letter?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I meant it. I’m real sorry.”
“I know,” he said quickly, giving the dirt a little kick.
“Are we…can we…still be friends?”
He put his foot down, staring at it. “I don’t know. Father Corbett said it’s okay for me to be angry.”
I went cold then, even though my armpits were prickly with sweat like it was hot as August. I guess I couldn’t blame Thomas for feeling that way, but I sure didn’t like hearing it. I looked at the ground. “Who’s Father Corbett?”
“My math teacher.” Thomas let his breath out with the same force as the air coming out of a tyre. “But I’m also supposed to forgive.”
I looked up, figuring that was a good sign. I still hoped we could be friends again. Someday. “I wish it had never happened,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “me, too.” He finally raised his head and stared into the distance like he was seeing far, far away. “But maybe it had to.”
I didn’t think I’d heard him right. “What?”
He shrugged. “Maybe we both had to grow up.”
“I don’t want to grow up like that!”
Thomas looked at me for the first time, the line between his eyebrows all creased. “How much choice have we got?”
His eyes were questioning, not like a teacher who already knows the answer and just wants to see if you’re listening, but like Thomas. The kid who asked me if Mr Dunlop always yelled at Rosie that way, the kid who wondered why Miss Georgia got mad when we made that Black Power salute, the kid who asked Daddy how come he respected Miss Georgia so much when other white people didn’t.
“Thomas!” It was his grandaddy’s voice. “It’s time to move along now.”
Mr and Mrs Jefferson were getting in their Chevelle. Thomas turned, walked slowly over to the car, and got in behind his grandaddy. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he waved at me in the rear window, so I waved back, just in case. I was still watching them drive off when I realized I’d never given Thomas an answer to his question.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
What Are You Up To?
When I went back to school, Miss Miller was talking about our Foxfire project. “Finish these up tonight, class, and bring them in tomorrow.”
Bobby Benson groaned. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes, Bobby,” she said, giving him a tight smile, “because the next day is Thanksgiving, and unless you’re planning on coming to school on Thanksgiving, you’ll need to bring your paper in tomorrow.”
Her smile turned soft when she bent over my desk. “I know it’s hard, Red, but Miss Georgia was a wonderful woman, and you’re doing something very important. By writing about her family’s history, Miss Georgia’s legacy will live on.”
I didn’t particularly want to write about that legacy. It was too awful and embarrassing. By the time I got on the bus, I realized I had to tell Miss Miller that I couldn’t write anything for that Foxfire project. When the bus reached the first stop, I went by J’s seat and told him I had to go back to school and to ask Beau to pick me up.
“Ohhhh.” J grinned. “Did you do something bad?”
“No more than you did,” I snapped back.
I walked back to school, thinking of what I’d say to Miss Miller. I could tell her I really didn’t get enough information and, now that Miss Georgia was gone, there was no way to get it. That was only partly lying. Miss Georgia was gone. And who was to say how much information was “enough”. But what if she told me to write up as much as I had? I’d have to tell her my heart wasn’t in it. That wasn’t a lie at all.
When I got to school, Sheriff Scott’s patrol car was out front. I hurried up the steps and heard shouting in the front office.
A man’s voice I didn’t recognize said, “Animal Farm? For sixth graders? They can no more understand that than – than a bunch of farm animals.”
“That’s right,” a woman said, and it sure sounded like Mrs Scott. “And it puts all kinds of ideas in their heads that they’re too little to be thinking about. They’re just babies!”
“I wouldn’t say babies—” the sheriff started, but he was interrupted by a bunch of other voices yelling and about the only one I could make out was Mrs Pugh saying, “I’ve counselled her so many times!” and then the sheriff telling everyone to calm down.
I walked quickly past the office and around the corner. Mr Walter was coming towards me carrying two boxes, one stacked on top of the other. I saw the Marvin Gaye album sticking up out of the top box and froze.
“Mr Walter?” I said, my voice rising.
He looked at me and his eyes were so sad. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, son.”
I saw the light from our classroom at the end of the hall. I finally moved, my sneakers squeaking down the long hallway, sounding like they were echoing Mr Walter’s words. I’m sor-ry son, I’m sor-ry son. I walked faster, the echo getting louder and more insistent, like a train getting up speed, I’m sor-ry son, I’m sor-ry son. I ran, trying to get away from the sound, but it only screamed louder in my ears, I’M SOR-RY SON, I’M SOR-RY SON, I’M SOR-RY SON!
I was running so fast I overshot the classroom and had to grab the doorjamb and swing myself inside. What I saw stopped me cold.
Miss Miller was surrounded by boxes. Her desk was practically empty. She was taking a poster off the wall when she wheeled around to face me.
“Red?”
I looked around the room, then at the poster in her hand, The time is always right to do what’s right. – Martin Luther King Jr. I looked at Miss Miller. Her eyes and nose were pink, but she tried to smile.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m –” she swallowed – “I’m leaving, Red.”
“Leaving?”
She wasn’t even trying to smile any more. She was just trying to stop from crying.
“Why?”
She blinked hard, pressed her quivering lips together, and turned away.
“We –” I said, even though I was thinking I, “want you to stay. We –” and again, I meant I – “need you to stay.”
She shook her head, rolling up the poster, putting a rubber band around it, and dropping it in a box on the floor. “I’ve been fired.”
“What! Why?”
She picked up the copy of Animal Farm from her desk and stared at the cover. “It seems I’m too much of a troublemaker for this community.” She tossed the book into one of the boxes.
“They’re firing you because of Animal Farm? Because of a book?”
“It’s not the book so much as…well, they don’t like my telling you what to think.”
“You don’t tell us what to think! You tell us to think!”
In spite of everything, Miss Miller smiled. “Thank you for understanding the difference, Red.”
“Who’s doing this?” I demanded.
She looked away.
I narrowed my eyes and hissed through clenched teeth. “Emma Jean Scott! Emma Jean, her mama, Sheriff—”
Miss Miller turned to face me. “It was not Emma Jean, and definitely not the sheriff.”
“Mrs Scott, then.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t them.” And the way she said it made me believe her.
If Emma Jean hadn’t told her parents, then who’d go shooting their big fat mouth—
“Bobby!” I said.
Miss Miller flinched.
“Bobby Benson’s the one who got you fired, isn’t he?”
Her hesitation gave her away. “It wasn’t Bobby.” But the way she said Bobby’s name told me al
l I needed to know.
It wasn’t Bobby. It was Bobby’s daddy. The preacher. Of course. He had power. And Miss Miller said things he didn’t like. She wanted people to think and question. Like Daddy, who wanted Open Doors Baptist Church to live up to its name and be open to everyone, including blacks. Like Mama, who told him, Red prefers to think for himself. Like Miss Miller.
Miss Miller turned back to the wall. “I’ve got to finish packing now, Red.”
“But – what about our Foxfire book?”
“I’ll have to leave that up to you.”
I heard a posse of footsteps coming down the hall. Miss Miller held onto her peace necklace. “You’d better go.”
I didn’t say anything, just backed out of the room, practically into Reverend Benson himself. And Sheriff Scott. And Mrs Pugh. And a bunch of other adults, who stared at me, then at Miss Miller. I wanted to yell at them, all of them, but I figured the way they were looking at Miss Miller it’d only make things worse for her.
“Red? What are you up to?” Reverend Benson asked. He smirked and looked down on me, waiting to see me squirm.
Usually I’d say what most kids would say – “Nothing” – and slink away. But something told me that was exactly what Reverend Benson wanted to hear. So I drew myself up and looked him in the eye. What was I up to? “A lot,” I said. “A whole lot.” And I gave a big smirk right back to him.
I turned and saw Mr Walter coming back down the hall, and I remembered how he’d held his head up high and walked out of our classroom even with people’s unfriendly eyes on him, and I did the same thing. I made sure to walk tall and hold my head up high the whole way down the hall. And when I walked past him, he gave me a nod, and I gave one back to him and I felt like there was someone who understood.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
My Paper
“That is an outrage!” Mama said, when I told her about Miss Miller.
She was pacing the kitchen so much, me and Beau had to lean back against the counter to keep out of her way. All of a sudden she grabbed her purse from the table, marched to the kitchen door, and slammed it behind her. We listened to the Chevy peel off.
“What’s she going to do?” Beau asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “I got a paper to write.” I wanted to give it to Miss Miller before she left town. I felt like I owed it to her.
I really did start writing it the truthful way because Miss Miller tried to do the right thing even though it got her fired. But it was hard to do the right thing. Real hard. The Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots stared at me from my dresser. There was so much bad stuff going on around me – Miss Georgia dying, Rosie getting beaten up, Miss Miller getting fired, Mama still planning on moving us to Ohio, what happened with Thomas – that I just couldn’t face writing down something as horrible and depressing as what had really happened.
I mean, who would know if I changed it a little bit? Miss Miller wouldn’t know. Miss Georgia was gone. Her son didn’t want anything to do with this place. Mama wouldn’t even know about it. Beau wouldn’t read it because he couldn’t read very well. Mr Dunlop wouldn’t read it. Rosie wouldn’t find out. Nobody in the world would ever know.
Except me.
And Daddy, because as soon as I started to write, his voice came into my head, saying, I hear ya, son, only I wished he wouldn’t. I pushed his voice out and thought about the meanness of Mr Dunlop and how just saying he killed George Freeman was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. But Daddy’s voice kept coming back, over and over, interrupting what I was trying to write.
“Red?”
I nearly jumped out of my chair because the voice wasn’t from inside my head. It came through my window.
I looked out and saw the green cap and then Beau’s face through the pine branches.
“Shoot, Beau! What are you doing out there?”
“Waiting for your mama to come home. Plus, I got you something to help you write.” He pushed it through the window.
It was a bottle of Coke, already opened for me.
I was about to take a sip, when Beau said, “Don’t worry, I didn’t steal it like J. I already paid for it.”
Now I had a new voice talking in my head. And it was mine. Scolding J for stealing those Cokes. What would Daddy have said, huh?
I stopped the bottle before it hit my mouth. Beau kept talking, but I didn’t even hear him because of all the voices already talking in my head.
Mine. You make a crime even worse when you try to cover it up, J.
Miss Georgia’s. You’re not one to run away from things.
Thomas’s. How much choice have we got?
Even Miss Miller’s words from the blackboard. The truth will set you free.
And Daddy’s. I hear ya, son.
“Okay, okay,” I yelled, “I get it!”
All the voices stopped. It was silent. Beau was outside my window, covering his mouth with one hand and tugging his hair with the other.
“Sorry, Beau,” I said. “I was yelling at myself.”
Slowly, he took his hand away from his mouth. “You know what to write now?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
It was almost midnight when I was finishing up my paper.
I’m not proud of all our history, but I’m not covering it up, either. I’m owning up to what we did. And I’m paying for it, like I should. That’s how we’ll get our good name back. Now I can be proud of my land again, even if it is a little different than I thought it was. And whatever I do from now on, I’m making my own history. I hope I don’t mess it up. But if I do, I’m not going to lie about it. You just have to make up for what you did. That’s the only way people can trust us. And it’s the only way people can respect me.
That’s when I finally thought of the title for my paper. It made me think of Daddy. It made me think of Miss Georgia. It made me think of where I came from, and who I was. And it made me smile.
I turned back to the first page and wrote in big capital letters across the top:
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
This time I was happy to hear Daddy’s voice in my head, saying, I hear ya, son.
CHAPTER FOURTY-FOUR
Daddy’s Grave
The next morning Mama said she couldn’t do anything to help Miss Miller even though she tried, and all she could do was spend the day helping her pack. I gave Mama my paper to give to her. She wasn’t my teacher any more, but I still wanted her to have it.
“We’re having Miss Miller – and Mr Reynolds – over for supper tonight so we can say goodbye to her,” Mama said. “I’m glad you’re up early, Red, because I’d like you to make the biscuits now.”
“Why? You said biscuits are best eaten right away.”
“The way things are going, who knows what today will bring? This way at least they’ll be ready.”
I was surprised I even got the biscuits to rise because I was in such a hateful mood. I hated that Miss Miller was fired. I hated that there were so many stupid people around and that they had such power. I hated it all the more because it made Mama so annoyed that she wanted to leave this place even faster. Now there was nothing for her here. Daddy was gone. Miss Georgia was gone. Miss Miller was going to leave. I didn’t know if Beau would be enough to keep her here. Or Rosie, since who knew how long she’d be with her relatives in Waynesboro?
We had a substitute teacher at school. She droned on and on and not one of us said a word. The classroom was quiet as a graveyard. I bet Mrs Pugh loved it.
When I got off the bus that afternoon, our front porch was piled high with boxes.
“No,” I heard myself say, like it was someone else talking, someone real sad.
I went inside slowly, and Mama was in the dining room wrapping china plates in newspaper.
“What’s going on?”
She stopped. “Mr Harrison said the buyer is in town already. He…he wants us out as soo
n as possible.”
“How soon?”
Mama blinked a few times and swallowed hard. Her voice came out as a whisper. “Tomorrow.”
“But – you shouldn’t even be selling, Mama! Some of this land isn’t even ours! We stole it!”
“I tried, Red, but Mr Harrison said—”
“Mr Harrison is a lowdown piece of—”
“Red,” Mama warned.
“Well, he is!”
“I don’t see any way around it,” she said.
I stormed outside and next thing I knew, Mama and J were standing by the car, J holding a brown paper lunch bag, his head hung down, and his lips wobbly. Mama’s lips were wobbly, too, but she steadied them enough to say, “We’re going up to tell Daddy goodbye. Do you want to come?”
I turned away and looked at the shop. “I’ll go on my own.”
“All right,” she said, “but be back by six o’clock. We’re still having Miss Miller over for supper for her –” Mama hesitated – “last night.”
Our last night, too.
I heard the car door open. “J?” Mama said. “What’s in your bag?”
J’s voice was quiet. “Sump’in for Daddy.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said, and I heard her slide onto the seat and shut the door.
After they left, I got the cedar box with the altar stone from under my bed and went over to the shop. I looked at the hymn and the map on the wall. I took out the altar stone and stared at it for a good long while before putting it in my pocket.
By the time I got to Daddy’s grave, Mama and J had already left. There were fresh white roses in a real vase, but I swallowed hard when I saw what J had brought in that lunch bag. His Flintstones bowl.
It was thundering in the distance and a few drops of rain fell, hitting the edges of J’s bowl and slowly dripping down inside. A petal fell off one of the roses and into the bowl. I took the piece of altar out of my pocket and knelt down in front of Daddy’s grave. A couple of sprinkles of rain hit the stone, turning those spots darker. Slowly, gently, I put it in the bowl next to the white rose petal.
“This is all I got for you, Daddy,” I whispered. “I tried. I really did. I’m sorry.”