“Leave the kid alone,” I heard Larry say.
“Someone shut the kid up!” Glen yelled, and the guy holding me down put his arm in front of my mouth.
“Aw, come on, man,” Darrell said, “let him go.” I saw Darrell’s boots next to me and felt pushed and pulled around the dirt. The whole time I was trying to scream and get my head in a position where I could see Thomas. I saw Larry running after Joe, tugging on his shoulder. Glen, his white scarf falling off, shoved Larry away and joined the group of guys heading to the tree with Joe and Thomas. As I struggled and tried to choke out my screams, Thomas was blurring and I realized the screaming was coming out of my eyes.
A gunshot split the night and everyone froze.
“What are you punks doing on my property? Who set that fire?” It was Kenny, crashing through the leaves behind me. “What the—” and the anger drained out of his booming voice until he sounded almost like a little kid. “What’s going on here?”
Everything happened at once. The flashlight went out, the guy holding me down jumped off me, Glen shouted, “Get the rope, Joe!” and there was a scurrying in every direction.
Darrell grabbed my arm that was still out of its socket, and I screamed.
“Well, get up!” he hissed.
“You boys get back here!” Kenny shouted, turning on a flashlight and waving it around. He ran past me, swearing, and headed to the tree.
I saw Thomas, his hands still tied behind his back, slumped against the tree trunk, and I screamed again. “No!”
“They didn’t do it, dingbat. Now get up!”
And I saw Darrell was right. Thomas was leaning against the tree, breathing heavily, but there was no rope around his neck.
“Keep your mouth shut!” Darrell said, dragging me into the darkness, but not before I saw Kenny untying the rope from Thomas’s hands, and Thomas looking at me like I was lower than a whole line of Dunlops.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thomas
The next morning I woke up late, with the feeling that something had woken me. When I remembered the night before, I felt sick. When I heard the voices in the kitchen, I felt worse.
The sheriff. And Mama. By her reaction, he was filling her in on what happened.
There was a knock at my door and Mama’s voice. “Red? Are you up?”
When I didn’t answer, she opened the door. I tried to pretend I was still asleep.
“Red, honey, get up! Something awful happened to Thomas – he’s okay, but you should hear this. Put some clothes on and come in the kitchen. Sheriff Scott is here.”
At least Mama didn’t know I was involved. When I got to the kitchen, I saw Beau was there, too, standing by the sink, next to Mama. The sheriff was blocking the light from the door. I hovered in the dining room doorway opposite him, rubbing my sore shoulder. All the while I kept my eyes on the kitchen wallpaper, staring hard at the little blue coffee pots and pink flowers. I couldn’t look the sheriff in the eye, but what I could see of his face didn’t look surprised at that. In fact, he was staring at me like he knew I was guilty.
Mama was too busy to notice, asking him about any injuries and how could something like this happen and what was going to be done about those boys. I glanced at Beau because something about him felt different. I realized that he wasn’t tugging his hair where it stuck out beneath his cap, like he normally would. He’d taken his cap off, clutching it in front of his chest, his head bowed like he was at a funeral. When he began to raise his head, I turned away quick because I didn’t want to have to look him in the eye, either.
“Red!” I flinched at Mama’s sharp voice as she stared at me. “They were even threatening to lynch him. Can you believe it? In this day and age!” She turned back to the sheriff. “Are the Jeffersons going to press charges?”
The sheriff seemed to get real interested in his big brown hat, turning it around and around as he stared at the gold braid. “Well,” he finally said, “seems like the ringleader was the Connor boy.”
“Oh,” said Mama. “I see. So nothing will be done.”
“I’m looking into it,” he said quickly. “Kenny Rae got Larry to tell me who all the boys were.”
I felt myself stiffen.
“And I talked with Thomas about it, too.” The sheriff gave his Kiss of Death. “Apparently the boys also lit a cross.”
Mama gasped. Beau moaned. I cringed.
“Kenny saw the fire. That’s why he went up to check it out. You know what a burning cross means.” I saw the sheriff’s boots turn so he was directly facing me, but I didn’t look up. “Thomas didn’t want to talk about that. If anyone has information, though, I’d like to hear it.”
I felt his eyes still on me, but I kept my eyes on the floor.
“Well, good day, Betty, Beau.” He paused as he put his hat on. “Red.”
I listened to the sheriff’s patrol car start up, crunch over the gravel, and drive down the road. We all stood in silence until J ran into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. I swear we all jumped.
“How come the sheriff was here? Did Red get in trouble again?”
“Of course not,” Mama said.
Beau let out a little moan like he knew I’d done wrong. “J, you want to come see the new toys in the Cracker Jack boxes?”
“Yeah!”
Beau put his hat back on and left with J.
Mama grabbed the phone receiver and yanked the dial over and over like she was going to rip it off the wall, muttering, “I’m calling Lily. This is just awful.”
Lily was Thomas’s grandmother. I backed up against the stove in the corner.
“Lily? It’s Betty Porter. I just found out what happened to Thomas last night and I am so sorry. Is he all right?”
As the pause stretched longer and longer I couldn’t look at Mama’s face, but I heard a little gasp come out of her and saw her body slump against the wall next to the phone. Her hand went up to her forehead like she was checking for a fever. “I had no idea.” Her voice was real quiet. “Yes, I’m surprised, too. And – and sorry. I’m very sorry. Goodbye.”
Mama hung up the phone slowly and turned to me.
I wish I hadn’t glanced up. The look on her face was like, well, like she was staring at a rabid fox cornered in the kitchen and she didn’t know whether to turn and run or back away real quiet and hope it would disappear. She started to speak, but no words came out until she cleared her throat several times. “What were you doing up there, Red?”
“I just went along with Darrell. I had no idea what they were going to do.”
“You know better than to go anywhere with Darrell Dunlop! Why didn’t you leave? Run get help?”
“It all happened so fast! Plus, I was scared to leave Thomas there. I didn’t know what they might do if I left.”
“But as soon as you saw him and how those boys were acting, you must’ve known something bad was going to happen.”
“I didn’t even know Thomas was there for most of the time!”
“How could you not have seen him?”
“They had him tied to a tree and gagged.”
“What?” Any colour she had left drained out of her face. She shook her head and her eyes filled up.
After a few long minutes, Mama turned to the phone again, her voice slow and croaky. “You need to talk to Thomas.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well,” she said, her voice gaining speed and power, “you’d better think fast.”
It hurt to see Mama dialling their number again and not just because I didn’t want to talk to Thomas. It hurt because, like me, she knew the number by heart. For years we’d called back and forth. This kind of thing shouldn’t happen with someone whose number you know by heart.
“Lily? It’s Betty again. I’m sorry to bother you, but Red would like to speak to Thomas so he can explain—”
Mama swallowed hard and went even paler, if that was possible. Again she tried to talk without any sound and had to c
lear her throat. “Of course. I can understand that. I-I’m sorry.”
She hung up slowly. “Thomas doesn’t want to talk to you.”
At first I was relieved because I really didn’t know what to say, but then it hit me what that meant. Thomas didn’t want to talk to me? Me? I wasn’t one of the Brotherhood guys. Is that what he thought? That I was one of them now? A Porter would never be one of them.
Mama’s arms were crossed and her foot was hammering the floor. “If Thomas doesn’t want to see you or talk to you – and I can certainly understand why – then you need to write him a letter, a very long letter to explain, if that’s possible, what in heaven’s name you were doing up on that mountain.” She marched out of the kitchen and returned with a pen and several sheets of paper, thrusting them at me.
I took them and headed for the kitchen door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the shop.”
“Oh, no, you don’t! You are writing Thomas a letter right—”
“I know. I’m going to sit at my desk and write it.”
It was almost like Mama took my words in her mouth and was chewing on them before she finally spat out, “Fine.”
Even the shop’s oil and dirt smell didn’t make me feel better. I trudged up the stairs in the back, slumped down on the chair, and put the paper on the desk. I got as far as “Dear Thomas,” and then I was stuck. I couldn’t even talk to Daddy because I felt like he was staring at me with his hurt-disappointed look. Even the hymn he wrote out and put on the wall by the desk seemed to be staring at me.
Buried in sorrow and in sin… I closed my eyes and put my head down on Old Man Porter’s desk. I sure felt buried in sorrow and sin.
I thought about the day of Daddy’s funeral. Thomas and his grandparents came to the burial. I guess they knew better than to try to come to the service at our church. Thomas had tried to give me a hug, but I didn’t feel like hugging anyone except Daddy that day, and I was kind of mad at Thomas for not being my friend any more and never coming over, especially when he and Daddy got along so well. It was like me and Daddy had both lost a friend. So I hadn’t even talked to Thomas. Mama snapped at me afterwards. She said Thomas had been crying during the burial and he thought the world of Daddy and I should’ve shown him a little more kindness, for Daddy’s sake, at least. I felt bad after that, but it wasn’t like we hung out any more and I could talk to him. And now I’d probably never talk to him again.
The shop door jiggled and light came in from outside. I lifted my head and saw Rosie marching across the shop floor towards me and up the stairs, her Dr Scholl’s sandals clomping and her bangle bracelets clacking.
She stopped by the desk and looked down at me. “Darrell told me what happened. Why would you do that, Red?”
“I don’t know. I-I didn’t really know what was happening until it was too late.”
Her hands were on her hips now. “You didn’t know you were burning a cross?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t mean, you know, what it really means to burn a cross. And I didn’t know Thomas was there. I never would’ve done it if I’d known Thomas was right there!”
Rosie didn’t say anything, which almost made it worse. It made my excuse sound stupid. I knew it wasn’t okay to do something like that, even if no black person actually saw you do it. The Brotherhood was there. And it made it look like I was one of them. And Thomas saw me.
She shook her head like when Mama was annoyed with us. “I don’t understand.”
“Me, neither,” I muttered.
“I know those boys,” she said. “Some of them are real nice. I can’t see them doing that.”
She looked away and I stared at her so hard my eyes stung because I was waiting for her to say that I was one of those boys who was real nice. But she never did. She just shook her head again, clomped down the steps, and walked out the door. The slapping of her Dr Scholl’s had never sounded so hollow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
School
I had to mail Thomas’s letter to Washington, DC, because he left Stony Gap the day after “the incident”, as Mama called it. I told him that I hadn’t known what kind of group the Brotherhood was or what they were going to do. I told him I was just trying to stop Mama from selling and that’s why I was stupid enough to follow Darrell and burn a cross, even though I should’ve known better. And I told him I was sorry. I said he was the best friend I ever had and I wished it hadn’t ended this way. And that I hoped, maybe, some day, we could be friends again. I wasn’t sure that last part would ever happen, but I still wanted to say it because I meant it.
I thought about Thomas a lot, and not just because Mama told me to. I couldn’t help it. I listened to both the albums he’d given me: James Brown’s Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud and Edwin Starr’s War & Peace. I pushed the buttons on our Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots, but it wasn’t the kind of game you could play real well by yourself. Even when I got one robot to knock the other’s block off, it didn’t feel like much of a victory. I still didn’t want J to play it, though, or he’d probably bust it, and Rosie refused to do any kind of fighting game, including fake fighting like this one. Even trying to get her to play G.I. Joe had never worked. She always brought Barbie over to lecture me and G.I. Joe about making peace not war.
Making peace not war is easier than it sounds. I tried to figure out how everything had happened up on the mountain behind Kenny’s and what I could’ve done about it. It had all gone so fast yet slow at the same time, like being in that accident with the Plymouth Belvedere before we got the Chevy. We were driving home from a church supper and it was dark and raining. An eighteen-wheeler was coming down the mountain towards us, and Daddy had just said a truck that size had no business being on a little country road when the truck skidded and crossed into our lane. I remember seeing those huge headlights coming straight for us and hearing Mama scream, “Frank!” and Daddy swear, and even though we were in that ditch in seconds, it also felt like it went on for ever, because I remember thinking, “Oh, man, we’re going to crash,” and “If my legs get broken I won’t be able to ride my new bike,” and “Should I wake up J, or is it better for him to sleep through this?” It was weird to have enough time to sit there pondering the terrible thing that was about to happen, feeling like you were trapped because it was going to happen anyway. That’s what it felt like on the mountain behind Kenny’s, only worse.
When school started, I didn’t even care because I figured it’d take my mind off things. J was real excited to get on the bus and pushed ahead of me to make sure he was first. I climbed up the rubber-treaded steps and was hit by the smell of the Pine-Sol cleaner the bus driver always used. I turned into the rows of faces and remembered how long it had been since I’d seen all these kids. They seemed to remember, too, because some of them quit talking and most of them stared at me. Or maybe they’d heard about what happened on the mountain behind Kenny’s. Only Lou Anne Atkins said hey. I mumbled a hey back and slid into an empty seat, putting my lunch bag beside me, hoping no one would sit there. I looked through the scratched-up window at the disappearing shop as the bus pulled away.
I didn’t want to look at the kids because they reminded me of when Daddy died. A lot of them came to the funeral, and their mamas and daddies told them they had to be nice to me. They called me up or even stopped by for the first couple of weeks, but seems after that they felt like I should’ve gotten over it, sort of like I had a bad case of the flu. The thing is, when you get over the flu, everything goes back to normal. When your daddy dies, nothing is ever going to be normal again. Riding on the bus felt familiar and strange at the same time, like being in school and finding a substitute teacher. The classroom might be the same but it felt different, like you were in the wrong place.
I felt like I was in the wrong place in Miss Miller’s class, too. Sure, she was pretty, like that actress Mary Tyler Moore on Mama’s favourite TV show. She had bouncy brown hair that flippe
d up at her shoulders, big green eyes, and a happy smile, but that was just the fake outside. Inside she was a teacher like any other. She might’ve had a peace-symbol necklace and a flower-power book bag, but her speech about working hard was just like a regular teacher.
“This year is going to be full of new and exciting challenges! We’re going to learn how to question and how to think. We’re going to work hard to find our place in this world.”
It’s always dangerous when a teacher says “we”. “We are going to work hard” really means, “You are going to work hard, and I’m going to mark it all up with my big red pen.”
Miss Miller told us we’d learn all about history, and recent history. She wanted us to watch the news or read the paper every day. She called it “living history”.
I groaned and slumped down in my desk. Every teacher has a pet subject she loves so much she can’t shut up about it. With Miss Miller, just my luck, it was history. How could people get so excited about history? It was all old and gone and you couldn’t do anything about it, anyway, so what was the point?
“Young man, what’s your name?”
I didn’t realize Miss Miller was talking to me until I heard the giggling and then Bobby Benson say, “That’s Red Porter, ma’am. He’s a little touched in the head.” Then he whispered, “He talks to dead people, retards, and Negroes!”
I sat up fast and glared at Bobby.
“Red, are you not feeling well today?”
Everyone was staring at me. Some kids were snickering. I was getting nervous and didn’t want to stare right in Miss Miller’s eyes, so I looked at the blackboard behind her. She’d written in blue chalk: The truth will set you free.
It was like a sign. I decided to tell the truth. “I’m fine, ma’am. I just don’t like history.”
Everyone’s eyes got bigger, even Miss Miller’s. And there was no more snickering, either.
Miss Miller folded her arms and all eyes were on her. She said, in kind of a friendly way, “I love history. Why is it that you don’t like it?”