I gave Darrell a little kick. “Give her a chance.”
After a moment, Rosie started breathing heavy and her face looked all funny. Her voice was real shaky and spooky. “Mr Porter, Mr Frank Porter. Please come back to us. We need to talk to you. Your son Red is here.” She squeezed my arm hard.
I jumped. “What?”
“Talk to him,” she hissed.
“But – what do I say?”
“Ask him about moving.”
I froze. I talked to Daddy all day in the shop, but I felt weird being put on the spot like this, especially in front of Darrell. “Can – can’t you ask, Rosie?”
I swear she rolled her eyes even though they were closed. “Mr Porter? Mr Porter, please tell us how can we stop Mrs Porter from moving.” Her hand rested on the plastic triangle and it started jerking around the board. Rosie’s voice was breathy. “Call out the letter every time it stops.”
“What letter?” I whispered back, as her arm dragged mine by the elbow.
“The letter in the see-through circle, stupid!” Darrell said.
“Shhhh!” Rosie cautioned.
I looked through the little circle when it stopped. “P.” Next, it hovered over the E, so I called that out, too. When it went back to the P again, I thought it might be a mistake. “P?”
Darrell snorted. “Do you need to go, Red?”
“Not that kind of pee!” I snapped.
Rosie made a warning rumble in her throat, and her hand started moving again.
“Okay,” Darrell said, “so far we got P-E-P. Pep? What kind of answer is that?”
Rosie’s hand stopped, and I read out the letter. “T, I think. Maybe it’s an S. It’s kind of between T and S—” But it moved again and I followed it with my eye. “Not P again! It must be O.”
Darrell shook his head. “This ain’t even a word. P-E-P-S-O. Pepso?”
“I think it was T, not S,” I said.
“Doesn’t make any difference,” Darrell answered. “P-E-P-T-O. Pepto. That’s – wait a minute!” He hooted. “Pepto-Bismol! That’s what’ll keep your mama from moving! Get it? Like bowel movement? You take Pepto-Bismol when you have the runs!”
“Darrell!” Rosie yelled.
He was laughing so much he rolled over backwards. That’s when he farted. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if it just came out, but there’s something about farts. Even when you’re feeling real serious, it’s hard not to laugh at them.
I started to grin but bit my lip because Rosie wasn’t laughing. She stood up and stomped her foot. “Darrell Dunlop, you ruined everything! It would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for you!”
He could hardly talk through his laughing. “Okay, I’ll leave so you can go on with your stupid spirit calling.” He let one more rip before getting up and walking off, still chuckling.
“It’s too late now!” Rosie yelled after him. “No spirit is going to come to this place tonight, thanks to you!” She grabbed the Ouija board and stormed after him, her beads slapping back and forth.
I didn’t feel like laughing then because there I was, all alone by Daddy’s headstone. I touched the smooth, glossy surface of the black-flecked granite.
FRANCIS STEWART PORTER,
LOVING HUSBAND OF BETTY ANN PORTER
FATHER OF FREDERICK STEWART PORTER
––– AND JOHN BROWN PORTER –––
FEBRUARY 11, 1933–JUNE 28, 1972
And I knew then that there was nothing Daddy could do any more. I was the one in charge. So I told him again, “You can count on me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Darrell’s Idea
I hardly slept that night, and early the next morning I was staring into the kitchen cabinet, my hands hanging onto the doors, groaning. With a jolt, I realized I was doing exactly what Daddy did on mornings after he’d worked late or was out playing poker until all hours. So I did what he always did. I fished around for his NASCAR mug, which Mama hid in the back because she said it was chipped and we should throw it out, grabbed the jar of Nescafé, and put the small pot on the stove with just a little water in it so it’d heat up fast. And I put the lid on the pot, which Daddy said was the trick to having it heat even faster. While the water heated I put a spoonful of instant coffee and two spoonfuls of sugar in the mug, stirring up the brown and white granules until they were mixed together. The water was already hot by then. I realized too late that I’d only heated enough to fill the mug halfway, so I filled the rest up with milk.
It tasted a little like melted coffee ice cream, which isn’t as good as mint chocolate chip but isn’t bad. After a few sips, I noticed that it had an after bite. The taste stayed with you, almost like the coffee had turned back into little grains and attached themselves to your tongue and the insides of your cheeks, and even if you tried to suck them off they stayed put. “Man, Daddy,” I muttered, “no wonder your breath smelled like coffee all morning.”
“Are you talking to Daddy again?” J stood in the doorway in his red briefs and matching undershirt.
I almost spilled my coffee. “Of course not. I’m just muttering.”
“What’s for breakfast?”
“Beats me,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. Mama hadn’t cooked since Daddy died, and J was a real picky eater, which didn’t help.
J grabbed his plastic Flintstones bowl from the drain board and slammed it on the counter. He’d gone back to using his baby plates all the time now. “I’m starving!”
“There’s cereal,” I said.
“I don’t like milk!” He slammed his bowl again. No wonder Daddy called him Bamm-Bamm after that noisy kid in The Flintstones.
“How about oatmeal?”
“Ew!”
“Then have some toast.”
“I don’t want toast!”
“You’re pretty picky for someone who’s starving.”
Rosie knocked on the screen door to the kitchen, and J ran over to whine at her. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed for her to see him in his underwear. “Red won’t fix me anything to eat!”
“I will, too, you just don’t want anything!” I sounded as ornery as J.
Rosie came inside and smiled at J, bending down so she could look him in the eye. “What do you like to eat in the mornings?”
“Pie!”
Rosie bit her lip and flashed me a look.
“Come on, J, you know Mama hasn’t made pie since Daddy…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Mama used to bake pies all the time to sell at the What-U-Want. People came from all over for those pies for birthdays, holidays, funerals, any special occasion. Now folks didn’t come by as much, since there were no pies and no Daddy to fix cars.
J stuck his bottom lip out. “I miss those pies.”
Rosie gave him a hug. “Everyone does, honey. What else can we get you, huh?”
“I dunno. Sump’in special.”
I saw the bananas on the counter and remembered what Daddy used to make for us. “Hey, J, how about some bananas in orange juice?”
“Yeah!” J said, jumping up and down.
Rosie smiled at me, which went a long way towards putting me in a good mood. I took another swig from my mug and her eyes settled on it.
“You’re drinking coffee now?”
“Yep.”
She thought about that for a moment and then nodded like it made total sense.
I couldn’t help smiling as I sliced the bananas.
J ran circles around the kitchen table, making noises like a hot-rod revving up so loud that Rosie was able to get away with whispering, “I’m sorry the séance didn’t work.”
I shrugged. “That’s okay.”
J ran into the counter next to me, pretending to crash, just as I dropped the pointy end of the banana out of its skin into his Flintstones bowl.
He just about flipped. “I’m not eating banana poop!”
“J, there’s no such thing as banana poop.”
“Yuh-huh, there is, too! It’s that black
stuff at the bottom of the banana.” He picked the banana piece out of his bowl and showed me the tiny bit of black at the pointy end. “See? That’s where it poops.”
Rosie giggled.
It wasn’t worth arguing with J, so I took the poopy end and put it in my bowl.
“Ew!” He hopped in circles around the kitchen, yelling, “Red eats banana poop! Red eats banana poop!”
I swear, it was hard trying to be nice to J. I splashed some orange juice in his bowl. “Come on,” I said to Rosie, “let’s get out of here.”
Rosie was still giggling, but as soon as we left the kitchen steps and crunched our shoes onto the gravel, she turned serious. “Darrell wants to see you.”
“Darrell?”
“Yes.” She folded her arms and looked over at the row of pines that ran from our shop to her shed. “He says he has a better idea than a stupid old séance.” She was pushing her lips together the way she did when she didn’t want the crying to come out.
“It wasn’t stupid, Rosie. It just didn’t work out is all.”
She gave me her little smile, and I followed her along the path of scrubby pines that stretched in a line from our shop to the Dunlops’ shed, except where it broke for the narrow bit of creek. Unlike the stupid pine tree stuck to my window, I always thought that this line of pines was something good, like a lifeline. Except for one thing: I loved our shop just as much as Rosie hated their shed. It was the place her daddy beat Darrell. Without that rope of pines connecting them, our places were about as far apart as heaven and h-e-double matchsticks.
We jumped the creek because it was nothing but a trickle, and I looked at the shed as we walked past. “Did Darrell…have to go to the shed?”
She shook her head.
Just then, I heard a scraping sound from inside the shed, and I jerked back.
“It’s Daddy,” Rosie whispered. “He’s still going through the boxes of Civil War stuff he got from Grandaddy at Easter time.”
“Well,” I said, giving her a grin, “he better watch out for those raccoons.”
She laughed out loud, now that the shed was far enough behind us. “It’s just old papers, anyway. He wanted guns.”
Darrell jumped out from behind a tree, and I couldn’t help but flinch.
He smirked, glanced down the row of pines to our shop, and looked at me. “I know how to stop your mama from selling.”
My heart lifted, even though it was Darrell talking. “How?”
He grinned so evil his dark face looked like his daddy’s. “No one will buy a place that’s destroyed.”
My heart sank again. “I’m not destroying the repair shop, Darrell. I want to keep it.”
“Not real destroying, stupid, just things that’s easily fixed but make it look ugly. You know how a place can look bad because, say, it ain’t been painted in a while or a screen is hanging off the window?”
I nodded, wondering if he was talking about his own house, because it sure was a sorry-looking place.
“Well, you just need to trash it up a bit.”
I thought for a minute and suddenly Darrell’s idea didn’t sound so bad. “Yeah,” I said, “Mama’s been doing some painting, trying to fix up the house. Maybe it’s time for me to do some painting of my own.”
“Naw, Red, you don’t want to go fixing the place up—”
“I’m not saying that. I’m thinking…spray paint.”
Darrell got his evil grin again. “We got lots of spray paint in our shed.” He hitched up his jeans around his beanpole waist. “And I got me some experience.”
I kept expecting Rosie to jump in and stop us, but she only chewed her lip.
Darrell spat like he always did to look cool. “You should come by Kenny’s. Meet me and my gang there tonight. We’ll help you with the plan.”
He’d never invited me to Kenny’s Pizza & Pool with him and his buddies, so I was quick to say yes.
“Eight o’clock tonight, squirt. Be there.” He pointed his finger at me and clicked, like he was holding a gun and cocking it. Then he turned and swaggered off as if he was Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.
“Come on,” said Rosie, grabbing my arm, “I want to go to your store and get a Hershey’s bar for Mama as a little treat before Daddy leaves. He’s going hunting and won’t be back until tomorrow night because he’s sick of – because Mama’s sick. It’s a strain on him, her being sickly all the time. He never gets away. He deserves a break.”
A break? It wasn’t like he did anything. Rosie was the one who took care of her mama. Why was she always covering up for him?
I listened to the slapping of her Dr Scholl’s sandals as we walked down the path. I couldn’t help looking at her because she seemed, I don’t know, a little different. Maybe older? Or maybe it wasn’t her looks. Maybe it was something else. That was it! “You smell, Rosie!”
Her sandals quit slapping, and she turned to stare at me.
“I-I mean, have you been making lemonade or something?”
Her open mouth quickly turned into her little heart smile. “Ohhh, it’s Love.”
I felt my face get hot, and I knew it was already pink, going on red.
Rosie laughed. “Love’s Fresh Lemon, silly. It’s the brand of shampoo and talcum powder I’m using now.” She held her wrist up to my nose. “Doesn’t it smell nice?”
“Y-yeah,” I said, even though I was backing away.
Rosie rolled her eyes but not in a mean way. In fact, she looked real pretty when she did it.
My face was still burning when we’d almost reached the What-U-Want and I noticed the silver Chevelle. It was Thomas’s grandaddy’s. He didn’t stop by the store as much now that me and Thomas didn’t hang out. And then I realized Thomas might be with him.
I ran up the steps of the What-U-Want and burst inside. Thomas was handing a shopping bag across the counter to Beau, which was weird because it should’ve been the other way around.
“Hey, Thomas,” I said.
He flinched, like he’d been caught, but he turned to face me. He looked as if he’d grown taller and thinner just since June. He was wearing his new clothes – a peace-symbol T-shirt and jeans – and the MIA bracelet he got to support a missing soldier in Vietnam. It wasn’t anyone he knew, but it was a black soldier who was some kind of technical specialist, like Barney in Mission: Impossible, and Thomas said he wanted to honour him.
Rosie had caught up with me and stood real close. “Hi, Thomas,” she said, crossing her arms. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” She said it the way a teacher would talk to a kid who’d been skipping school. She even raised her eyebrows at Thomas like she expected an answer.
Thomas’s grandaddy stepped up to the counter with some cereal and milk. “Oh, that’s because young Thomas here has his bags packed already even though he doesn’t leave until next week. Now that he’s fourteen, he thinks Stony Gap is an ignorant little town not worth visiting any more, don’t you, Thomas?”
Thomas hung his head, but his hands were on his hips, kind of like he was split between feeling bad and feeling angry.
Mr Jefferson sighed and his voice was softer. “There are ignorant people everywhere, Thomas. Sure, we got our share, but most people here wouldn’t…aren’t like that.”
Beau tugged at his hair, and Rosie looked at the floor. We all knew what he was talking about. It was the reason Thomas quit hanging out with me. Someone had tried to burn a cross in the Jeffersons’ front yard just because they happen to be black.
Sheriff Scott called it an “isolated incident”, which meant it was some crazy person and it wasn’t going to happen again. But it was like someone told Thomas we couldn’t be friends any more, since I was white and he was black. Mama said she didn’t blame him for being unsettled and that she’d want to move her entire family away if that happened to us. But that was Mama for you.
Thomas raised his head and looked his grandfather square in the eye. “I’m still going to find out who did it.”
I watched Mr Jefferson’s face turn hard. When he spoke, it sounded like his teeth were clenched. “It’s time to go, Thomas.”
“ ’Bye, Thomas,” Beau said. “Don’t be a stranger, okay? I sure do miss your laugh.”
Thomas gave him a nod and followed his grandfather out of the store. I stared at the back of his head, noticing that his hair was longer than it used to be, like one of those new styled Afros that Reverend Benson said were the slippery slope to crime. Thomas said everyone had Afros in the city. He said he could do anything he wanted there and nobody stopped him just because he was black. We’d argued about Stony Gap, Virginia, versus Washington, DC, but he said I wouldn’t understand because I was white. I reminded him that we’d done that Black Power salute together for years. He said I really didn’t get what it meant.
I wasn’t ignorant. And Stony Gap wasn’t an ignorant town. Sure, there were a few folks like Mr Dunlop and Reverend Benson. But not us Porters. That’s why I was still mad that Thomas wouldn’t be friends with me.
Beau walked over to me with the shopping bag. “Thomas brought this for you.”
I took the bag and looked inside. It was our Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots game.
“Thomas said you might could play it with J,” Beau said. “Hey, Rosie,” he added, “how are you today?”
“I’m fine, thanks. How about you? And your mama?”
“Oh, she’s not too good…”
I only half heard their conversation about how sick their mamas were because I was busy staring into the bag. It was his year to have the game. Now he was giving it back? Did that mean he was too old for it now or that he never wanted to be my friend again?
Rosie waved the Hershey’s bar she bought for her mama in my face and smiled, but when she looked in the bag, her lips drooped. “You and Thomas used to play that nonstop.”
I shrugged. “It’s a kids’ game.” But as I looked in the bag, a part of me sure wished Thomas would hang out and go another round of Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots with me. Why did he have to change so much?
CHAPTER FIVE
The Lawyer
I watched Rosie crunch her way through the gravel over to our shop, then disappear behind the pines as she turned onto the path that led to the Dunlops’ shed. I put the Robots in my closet, hiding them from J. I didn’t care what Thomas said, I wasn’t playing with J. Thomas was two years older than me and he didn’t want to hang out with me any more. What made him think I’d want to play with J, who was more than four years younger than me? I gave the bag a kick to send it to the back of the closet, and also because I felt like it. I went back to the What-U-Want to help Beau stock the shelves, but not before I heard Mr Dunlop yelling at Rosie, which made my heart start pounding and my feet start wishing I could go over and kick Mr Dunlop.