“What happened?”
What does he want from me? It isn’t like him to get excited about a little cheese and a couple of oranges for a starving man.
“Are you gonna tell me!” His mouth smelled like yesterday’s ash tray. “Tell me who he was.”
“A man, a hungry man. I told you.”
“White or colored?”
It wasn’t the food that bothered him, but what? “White,” I said, hoping this would give him some reassurance. “He was white.”
My father sucked in a deep breath. “How old was he?”
Where were we going? I searched Sister Parker’s face for a clue, but the only thing I could see was interest and, maybe, fear. “He wasn’t too young. He had whiskers that were turning gray; I guess he was at least forty.”
“And this man, you gave him something too, didn’t you?” My father’s voice had become calm, almost confidential.
Then it came to me what this was all about. Sure. That must be it. I thought about the time I sneaked into the movies without paying and later when I told him about it, he made me go back with the money. He’s a regular Abraham Lincoln. My confidence reappeared.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I sure did.”
“What was it?”
Maybe he did care about the oranges, which might be kind of expensive, coming all the way from Florida. “I gave him what I told you. Bread and cheese and—and two little oranges that were overripe and about to go bad.”
“What did he do to you?”
What does he want me to say? “The only thing he did was to thank me. He was very polite.”
“You’re lying, you dirty girl.”
“No, sir, I’m telling the truth.”
“Liar! He touched you. You let him put his hands on you, filthy, fil-thy girl!” As he raised his hand I clamped my eyes shut.
“Awww!” I fell backward against the magazine stand and slid down while a landslide of periodicals tumbled across my chest and legs.
As he walked away I spoke to his back. “And I don’t love you. Nobody does!”
15. A friend who loves you
SISTER PARKER LED ME by the elbow toward the back of the store and then up the steps to the balcony. “You’re gonna be all right,” she said.
From below came my mother’s voice. “What did she do? Why did you hit her? Harry?”
Sister guided me past large cartons of unopened merchandise and my father’s polished pine desk to the brown studio couch. A couple of times a day my father whispers to my mother, “Watch out for things. I’m gonna go rest my eyes on the couch.”
“Now lie down,” said Sister. “I’ll bring you a cold towel for your face.” There? She wants me to lie down there where his head has rested?
“No, it’s too soft. Here on the floor, where it’s cool.” Sister Parker stooped to place the couch’s tired brown bolster under my head before turning to leave.
From downstairs I heard the rapid cranking of the phone. “Mary? Is the sheriff in his office? All right, then try his home. Hello? Sheriff Cauldwell? ... This is Harry Bergen. I want you to come down to the store right now. ... I don’t know whether it is or not. Come over and find out.” The receiver was slammed down.
“What did you call him for?” I heard my mother’s voice go hysterical. “Harry, tell me what’s wrong!”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, something is.”
“Damn you, woman, don’t you go calling me a liar! Your mother may lead your old man around by the nose, but you’re not gonna do it to me!”
Damn them! Damn them both! Must they let the whole world see them fight?
Where he hit me my face felt bruised and hot. My stomach, though, felt the worst. All the food I’d eaten, all the food I’d ever eaten, moaned and churned, growing putrid and decayed.
“Anton,” my voice whispered, “why did you have to go and leave me?” Hiccupy sobs came to keep company with my body shakes. God, I wish I could shut up and sink deep and unnoticed into the ground. Die. Yes, die with the mark of his hand still across my face. Explain that to people, to the sheriff, to the judge.
Outside, a car made a sudden attention-getting stop, and within moments I recognized the guns-and-bullets voice. “What’s up, Harry?”
My brain felt too bruised to even think about a plan. How long did I have? Not very. Remembering my source of strength, my right hand went rushing across left fingers. Then I remembered that I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t have my ring!
Footsteps, like cannons, ascended the balcony stairs. Beat me! Kill me! Not one thing am I going to say till I get back my ring. “Remember,” Anton had said to me, “... you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.”
The footsteps stopped at my head and for a moment all was quiet. Then my father broke the silence. “Get yourself off that floor.” As I rolled over on my stomach he spoke again. “The sheriff is here. There’s a lot of things he wants to know. Do ya hear?” I stood up and looked him in the eye.
“Answer me!”
The words struck wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal and the crying started anew.
“Go on downstairs. Let me talk to her, Harry,” said the big voice.
“Talk to her,” said my father. “Go on, but I’m gonna stay right here.”
“Now, Patty, we’ve been knowing each other for quite a long spell now.” The big voice was speaking softly. “And you’re a smart girl, and I respect that. I want you to respect the fact that I’m a big old two-hundred-and-fifty-pound sheriff who’d never raise his hand against you.”
“Ask the questions,” demanded my father.
“Harry, which one of us is the sheriff of this here county? If you let me be the sheriff then I’m gonna let you be the merchant.” Sheriff Cauldwell sat me down on the couch and he settled into my father’s desk chair. “Patty, if some man did something to hurt you, you gotta tell me about it so I can stop him. So that he can never do it again to some other young girl. Now, you tell me, Patty, ’cause you ain’t got a thing to be afraid of.”
I looked past the sheriff’s elbow to see if my father had disintegrated. He hadn’t. “Sheriff Cauldwell, please, may I have my ring back now?”
“Why, shore you can. Harry, give her back her ring.”
“I’m keeping it for evidence.”
“You being the sheriff again, are you? Give Patty back her ring.”
I heard the air rushing like a powerful vacuum through my father’s nostrils. I prayed that if God wouldn’t protect me, surely Sheriff Cauldwell would. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I opened my eyes to see my ring pass from my father’s fingers to the sheriff’s and finally back into my waiting hand.
“Oh, thanks. Is it mine to keep? Is anybody going to take it away from me?”
Sheriff Cauldwell turned a steady gaze on my father. “Anybody touches that ring gonna have to answer to me first. Now, you want to tell me where you got it?”
“Yes, sir. There was this man—he was kinda old ’cause his whiskers were white—and he told me that he hadn’t eaten in quite a while. So I told him that if he would follow me home and sit on our back doorstep I’d bring him some food from our refrigerator. And so I did and so he gave me the ring.”
The sheriff rubbed his chin. “Did anything else happen? I mean, did he hurt you in any way?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, did he touch you anywhere on your body?”
“Oh, no, sir. Except—”
“Except what?” Something of the guns-and-bullets quality returned to his voice.
“Except when we touched hands to shake good-bye.”
Sheriff Cauldwell released a low chuckle, shaking his head. “And that’s all there was to it, huh? Where was your colored woman when you were feeding this man?”
“Well, she was in the house, cleaning the living room, I think. But she didn’t know anything about his being there.”
The sheriff
was looking at me with his heavy, yet strong-jawed face, and I got to liking him, this man of power who didn’t like to hurt. “And you’re saying your colored woman was close enough that if you hollered she’d have heard you and come a-running?”
“Oh, yes, sir! She would have run so fast—Ruth wouldn’t let anybody hurt me.”
Sheriff Cauldwell let out a deep sigh. “Well, now, Harry, I’m gonna tell you; I’m real satisfied. You?”
“No, I’m not.” My father’s voice sounded stretched, like rubber bands, to the breaking point. “I’m a long way from being satisfied. Why’d he give her the ring, can you answer me that? Twenty-four carat gold?”
“I reckon I’m not above asking. Why did he give you the ring, Patty?”
“Well, I mean, you want to know the real reason?” I asked, waiting for my brain to send forth some kind of message.
“Yep,” said Sheriff Cauldwell.
I rubbed the ring’s indented crest across my lips and waited for its powers to surge forth. “Well, I suppose it’s what he said to me after eating the food—” Then the reason came to me, dropping like a highly accurate weapon into my shooting hand. I turned and aimed it directly at my father. “‘Patty,’ said the old man, ‘I could go through this world proud and happy if only God had seen fit to give me a daughter exactly like you.’”
16. My Summer, My Anton
THE SUMMER OF my Anton was gone; fall was here and winter was coming. It felt like the right time to add up the gains and subtract the losses.
My losses were only one, only him. And yet that far outdistanced any gains. My fingers held his ring while my eyes explored, for an uncountable time, the mysteries of its princely crest.
There has been something to the good, I guess, because somehow it’s different with my father. He sees me differently, maybe with more power. Yes, that’s it! I tried to remember how it came to be and at what moment. I only knew that it was there, unmistakably there. The new ingredient wasn’t love, it wasn’t as good. It was, I guess, respect. Respect for a person who he’s incapable of destroying.
I thought of last April when the tornado came roaring through town like the Missouri Pacific, taking with it the roof on Mr. McDonald’s dairy barn. Tommy McDonald himself told me how all eleven of the milking cows were hurt except for the one which was outright killed. Only one animal, Esmeralda, a ten-year-old striped cat with one eye, survived intact.
And that’s what he didn’t know before. He knows that I’m an Esmeralda too for, whatever he may say or do, I’m going to survive pretty much intact. One gain.
Then there’s my mother. Any gains there? Same mother with the same little hit-the-victim-and-run comments. But now at least it’s not my hair. She has a newer one: “How come Edna Louise has all the friends?” Just being in the same room with you, Mother, is like being feast for a thousand starving insects.
Tally it up: one loss, one gain, and one tie score.
From Anton’s hide-out I watched a random leaf from a sturdy oak cut its family ties and float free on a small current of air.
Wish I were like that leaf. Someday, when the time is ripe, I’ll soar away on my own air current. At eighteen the law says a person is no longer a child, and I’ll have graduated from high school. Then there’s the war bond, the one whole thousand-dollar war bond that Grandma and Grandpa Fried bought for me. Did they say for my college education? I don’t remember. Well, what if they did? A person can do whatever she wants with her own money.
How far is it? And how much does it cost? A thousand dollars must be money enough, yes, of course, I can do it. But why didn’t I think of it before? Suddenly I felt as though I had something to look forward to.
Something that I had once said to Sister Parker now seemed to carry the seeds of prophecy. That story I told about the ring and the man who promised me I would be rewarded on my eighteenth birthday. Could a made-up story carry a prophecy?
It was the most natural thing in the world. The war would be over by then, and surely for Anton I could grow at least a little beautiful. And Greyhound buses go to New York and boats to Germany and trains to Göttingen. Six more years isn’t tomorrow—but it isn’t forever either. I’d be eighteen and grown-up with gentle curves and long shiny hair. My hand felt some of the remaining brittle handiwork of Mrs. Reeves, and I remembered what Ruth is always saying, “Folks keep forgetting that wishing don’t make nothing so, but prayer sometimes do.”
“Oh, Lord,” I called out like he had suddenly grown hard of hearing, “please give me long beautiful hair for him to love, Amen.” And then as an afterthought, “And a bosom.” My hand struck across the flat terrain of my chest. “I want a bosom of my very own!” Then it hit me that what I had asked for might come under the heading of blasphemy, so I quickly added, “If it’s not too much trouble. I mean if it’s O.K. with you that I should have one—I mean two.”
“Patty! Oh-de-ho-ho, Patty!” Ruth always had this way of making a call from the back porch sound like a little song. She was waiting for me with a put-upon look. “How come he’s a-coming home this time a day? What does he want to see you fer?”
“Who’s coming home? Who wants to see me?”
“Him. Your daddy.”
“But I haven’t done anything!” I looked into Ruth’s face, but the only thing there was a reflection of my own confusion. “Did he sound mad?”
Ruth’s face registered mild surprise. “No. Not any madder than usual.”
The tension gushed from my body like air from a punctured inner tube. “He just wants me to do something for him, don’t you think?”
Ruth nodded in agreement. “Now, whatever he wants done, you jest shake your head and tell him, ‘Yes, sir.’ You hear me talking to you, girl?”
I gave Ruth a half nod.
“And if you knows of a faster way, or a cheaper way, or even a nicer way, you jest keeps that information to yourself. He don’t wanna hear nothing like that from you.”
Annoyed, I answered, “I know all that.” Yet, I was grateful for the reminder. I gave my ring a kiss for luck. “You don’t suppose Sheriff Cauldwell told my father that he could take my ring away, do you?” Then I answered my own question. “The sheriff wouldn’t do such a thing. Besides, this is the most valuable thing I own. It’s like—like my Bible, know that?”
“It tells one of them same stories the Bible do, love thy neighbor.”
I pulled the ring from my finger, dropping it into the pocket of Ruth’s apron. “Well, nobody’s going to take it from me, not as long as I live.”
From the distance of two blocks I heard the motor of the car gun itself up like it was just beginning the journey of a thousand miles, all up mountain. I didn’t want him to think he had me concerned, so I grabbed a copy of the Reader’s Digest and belly-dived to the bed.
The front door opened and slammed shut. I heard the sound of his voice without catching his words. But Ruth’s voice came through unmistakably clear: “In her room, I reckon.”
As the door swung open my eyes continued keeping company with the Reader’s Digest. A rattle from a throat sent my gaze towards the door. Two men. And my father too. What do they want? Danger!
One of the men took a step forward. “Well, young lady, I’m Mr. Pierce. Remember me?”
Yes, so that’s who it is. “No sir,” I lied.
“Well, I just stopped by to chat.”
“You tell him everything he wants to know,” said my father, “or so help me you’re gonna wish you’d never been born.”
“Lots of times I wish that,” I said in a normal voice, surprised that my thoughts came out in hearable words.
“God damn you, girl,” he said, his face fired with sudden redness. “Who in hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Mr. Pierce looked shocked or frightened or both. “Now, Mr. Bergen, please. She’s only a kid.”
I watched my father’s face change to a color that more closely resembled purple. “A kid! Now, you listen here, Mr. FBI”—he p
ointed a trembling finger at me—“that’s no little kid, never has been, ’cause when she was born her brain was bigger than yours is now. Understand?”
Was it possible that he was actually giving me a compliment?
Mr. Pierce’s ears seemed to catch my father’s coloring. “I fail to understand what insulting me has to do with the matter at hand?”
“I wasn’t insulting you, I was warning you. You just be careful of that girl, she can make lies sound like the truth and the truth sound like a pack of vile lies. But no matter how she lies, she wouldn’t spit on a Nazi if his body was on fire.”
Pierce nodded. “Let’s get on with it. I’d like to ask your daughter a few questions.”
“So question. Question!”
Pierce took out a gold fountain pen from his breast pocket and opened a stenographic pad to a clean page. “Tell me,” he said after a pause, “what grade are you in?”
“Seventh,” I said, relieved at the way the questions began. I’d feel even more relief if I knew what this was about.
“Who are your teachers?”
“Teachers? I only have one,” I said. “Miss Hooten, unless you—do you want to know who my study hall teacher is?”
“All right,” he answered.
All right he did or all right he didn’t? I had the feeling I shouldn’t make any mistakes. “Do you want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Coach Rawlings,” I said as Mr. Pierce wrote something in his pad. “But he’s not my teacher or anything. We can go to the library on Fridays and read or study, and he just sits there and keeps the kids quiet.” I knew I was making too much of it.
Pierce looked up from his pad. “You have a lot of friends?”
“Well, I guess so,” I answered, grateful my mother wasn’t here to contradict.
“Name them,” said Pierce.
“Well,” I said, thinking of Anton and Ruth, “they’re just kids.”
“Who are they?”
“Well, there’s Edna Louise Jackson, she’s one of my friends.” I wondered if Edna Louise would ever list me as one of her friends. “And Juanita Henkins, and I guess, Donna Rhodes. I guess those are my main friends.”