The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, A Novel of a '50s Family

  "Git away from 'im, shoo," that colored woman says. I think she's talking to me. "Well, Charlie, you finely done what Prissy ast and brought her a white boy."

  So now I'm out back of that wood shack warming my hands on the fire. Charles disappeared ten minutes ago with the woman. So have all the kids. They left me with this girl that keeps stacking wood on the fire and laughing like there's something funny about a big fire. "This fire's yourn, Bobby Ray," is the way she put it. She has on a pair of tight Levis and an old shirt tied in front around her middle. Leaves a little brown skin between her shirt and pants. First she wants to play catch, has this old tetherball that is too soft to bounce. So we pass it back and forth a little. Then she holds it, comes to me, teases me about the ball then starts to run from me. I chase her a little, but she lets me catch her. She bounces that ball off my knee real quick, picks it up again. The next time she starts to throw at me from close range, I put my hands up to catch it.

  "No, Bobby Ray," she says. "Jus let me bounce it off you."

  So I stand here and she comes up close, bounces it off my chest, each shoulder, one at a time, top of my head. I catch it when she throws it at my stomach.

  "Use to live outside a Chowchilla," she says. "Ma brother still does. Lives with his pappy." So she comes up close, takes my hand. "What you want do now, Bobby Ray?"

  It's like she fell in love with my name. I don't know why Charles introduced me to her using my full name. So she starts swinging me by the arms, us moving around in a circle. Part of the time she has that fire on her face and then she's black again. We get going so fast, feels like she's going to pull my arms out of my shoulder sockets. "Wheee!" she says. I get a little dizzy, have trouble standing straight. Her hands are like soft leather, smooth like the Naugahyde on my car seats. We stand side by side looking into the fire, the flames licking at the wood, glowing coals down inside. They have a pot on with water for coffee. Has some ashes floating on top. She runs her hand along the back of my shoulders, down my arm. Still feel a little light rain. She got rid of the dogs, but I still can't keep from watching for them.

  "Come on. Show you where I stay."

  I have my arm around her waist as we walk to a building that's about the size of an outhouse. It doesn't have a door, just an open space. Some naked bedsprings sit on cinder blocks with a sheet of plywood on top. Two tattered quilts laid on that. Inside is not as big as I thought.

  I don't want my hands on her, but they just find her skin by themselves. They want the swoops her body makes. I shouldn't be in this town. I don't know how old she is either. But this time I can't stop myself. I've never wanted anyone so bad.

  "Don't have a bra, Bobby Ray. I'm not like a white girl." Her mouth tastes like vinegar. A little later, she says, "Don't have panties either."

  I smell the wood fire burning. Hear the popping just outside the door, see the flickers on the wall inside. Smell hot coffee.

  "All I need is for you to member," she says. "Bobby Ray, Bobby Ray. Jus member me."

  Everywhere she touches me, I burn. I feel like a blacksmith pounding hot metal. She feels like hot coals inside.

  I don't know if I fell asleep, but the next thing I hear is a shout. I didn't catch the words. The dogs start barking again. As I go back out through that hole she has for a door, I see a colored boy coming out of the dark toward me, moving fast.

  "What you doin in there, white boy? What you doing with my lil sister off to yourself?" He's taller than I am and a lot thinner.

  I try to move on around him back to the Hudson. I hear shouts from the other side of the house, hear Charles. I don't need a fight here, that's for sure. But he won't let me past.

  "Chelsey," and now it's the colored girl from behind me, "leave 'im alone. He's my business."

  Oh, shit! I think. I hope this isn't the Chelsey I know. I think it is, but it's just a little too dark to see for sure. Chelsey is standing off against me. I walk around him, head for the front of the house with her walking between him and me, keeps pushing him back. I get a good look at him in the fire. Sure enough, it's the Chelsey I go to school with. I shouldn't be here. This is a place for colored folks, not white kids.

  Prissy comes up from behind, pushes me to the side.

  "Go on," she says to me. "You be leaving now."

  "You shamin yourself with a white boy," says Chelsey. And then it's like he just recognized me, and he looks real puzzled. "Bobby Hammer? Is that you?"

  "How you doing, Chelsey?" I ask, but the words don't seem like the ones I should be using.

  "Git out, Chelsey. I don't need you fussin at us." Prissy sounds a lot older now than I thought she was.

  "Can't let him git away with it, Prissy."

  "You talkin crazy, Chelsey."

  Charles and three colored men are leaning on the Hudson with their arms up on the roof, shooting the breeze. Charles is on the opposite side of the car from the coloreds. They turn to look when they hear us coming. Charles' colored girl is inside behind the wheel. Charles is petting that big black dog.

  "Chel's flushed out the second honky," is what the tallest one says when he sees me coming. "He always has had a nose for white trash. Where's old Zulu? He'll make a meal out of this one."

  "Bobby," and it's Chelsey calling me from behind. "I thought you were my friend. My little sister's not too smart. You're gonna have to pay for this one."

  "Git off the car, Homer," says Prissy. "These boys are leaving."

  "Thirteen and already bossin the men folk," is what Homer says back. "Zulu! Get over here. You dumb old mutt." That bear-like sonofabitch Charles is petting on comes running to Homer.

  "Sic'em," says Homer and he's pointing at me.

  But a pistol fires and old Zulu yelps. It sounds so close, I figure someone has shot me, but then I see it was Charles firing over the hood of that Hudson with Lenny's little silver pistol.

  "Get the dog away from Bobby or I'll kill him," says Charles.

  But the coloreds don't have to do anything because that pistol has already taken the fight out of old Zulu.

  "Get in the car," Charles tells me. "You calm down, Chelsey. Nobody's been hurt here." Doesn't look like he's wanting to stay here though.

  "Charles," and now it's Chelsey talking, "you shouldn't a brought him out here. I'll see you at school, Bobby.

  Prissy is pushing me around to the driver's side of the car, and when I reach for the back door handle, she gets there first and slides to the far side of the backseat, rolls down the window, starts chewing on Chelsey again. Charles is in the front seat and has pushed his colored girl over, started the car and already has it rolling.

  "You better leave my sister here," says Chelsey as we pull away. "Maggie, you get back here too." Then he bounces a clod off the top of the Hudson.

  Charles drives a couple of miles before he stops in the dark, and it gets real quiet. I hear the old Hudson creaking, settling down. Charles and his colored girl whisper up front for a couple of minutes, then disappear below the front seat. In a little bit I smell the awlfulest smell two human beings ever made.

  Now that I know Prissy's just thirteen, I don't feel about her quite like I did. Curt's thirteen. I cuddle up with her again, but something is missing. And Chelsey is mad as hell at me. I can't say I blame him. Me and Prissy just lay down in the backseat for a while waiting for them to get through. Prissy is as warm as a slept-in bed, has sour armpits. I feel her breasts rising and falling against my chest, feel her heart beat on my lips against her neck. Then I hear a little low-level crying up front. They whisper a little. Maybe some whimpering.

  "You want to switch, Bobby?" asks Charles.

  "Switch what?"

  "Switch girls."

  That's what I though he meant. "I don't think so."

  Prissy is shaking her head no about forty miles an hour.

  "Come on. Let's switch." And he raises up off his colored girl.

  "No, Charlie," Maggie says.

  "Get in the back."

  I
hear them pulling on their clothes and she's crying.

  I raise up off of Prissy.

  He reaches back where we are, grabs Prissy's arm. "Come on over the seat," he tells her.

  "She doesn't want to," I say.

  "It's not her decision."

  "I'm saying no, too," I tell him.

  He pops open his door and grabs his girl by the arm, drags her out of the car. "Jesuschrist. What am I going to have to do to keep this going?" He jerks my back door open.

  I step out in the cold air facing him. His colored girl walks around behind me to get in the backseat. I hear the back door on the other side pop open.

  "This isn't right and I'm not doing it," I tell him.

  "Bobby," he says, and he has both hands raised like he just gave up. He's searching for words. "You're on my territory now. Quit fucking with me, if you know what's good for you."

  "Listen, goddamn you, Charles. Stop it! Will you? I'm going to hit you, you sonofabitch. You can't do this to me." And I wish I'd said he couldn't do it to Prissy, but I made a mistake.

  "But, Bobby," and me being mad seems to have calmed him. "Look. It's already settled. The girls have decided."

  I look inside and sure enough. Prissy is already sitting in the front seat. Now why did she want to go and do that?

  "Get back in the car before we have real trouble," Charles tells me. "I've never seen such a trouble maker as you."

  So I'm sitting on one side of the backseat and Charles' colored girl is sitting on the other. She just told me her name is Maggie. Charles is kissing on Prissy up front but she's not helping him any. In a little bit their heads disappear below the seat. He keeps whispering to her. She keeps whispering "no" back. Then I hear a slap and I don't know who hit who but she's crying.

  Maggie scoots over next to me. "You want to take a walk?" she asks.

  We're out in the cold walking the gravel road, but I can't keep my mind off of what's going on in the car. A short ways off through the dark, I see an old barn and a little shack. I think it's a shack but I can't see it too good through the dark. See a little light in a window, I think.

  "You got a white girl back in Chowchilla?" Maggie asks.

  "Yeah, I have a girl. I like her a lot too." And right now I think Bev is about the best girl in the entire world. "But I sure wish Charles would leave Prissy alone. This isn't right." I hear crickets off in the grass and a hoot owl flaps by overhead.

  "I be Charlie's girl going on six years now. Why you come out here when you already have a girl?"

  "Cause I'm stupid. I'm dumb as a rock, if you want to know the truth. I didn't know why Charles was bring me here, but I should have. He's always up to no good." I keep hearing a ruckus from the car but can't tell what it means.

  "So why don't you stay home from now on. You dragged Prissy into this."

  That's when the car door pops open again, and I see Charles holding one of Prissy's arms and slapping her. Every time he slaps her, she hits him in the face with her fist.

  I run over there.

  "Charles. Damn you. You sonofabitch." And when I get there I pound him right in the middle of the back. Thud is how it sounds. And then I back off. I see Prissy has a bloody nose and a puffy place over her left eye.

  Charles turns loose of her and climbs out of the car real slow.

  "Okay, Bobby Hammer. This one is between you and me."

  I see his face in the light from inside the car. Looks like he has a bloody nose too, maybe a split lip.

  "You girls," he says over his shoulder, "go on back to your nigger camp."

  "It's too far to walk," I say.

  "Two miles isn't far for a nigger." And then he comes toward me.

  I go straight at him, stick out a left jab that goes wide and then throw a right that goes over his head. He's down low, grabs me around the waist with both arms and raises me over his head. He starts running with me up there. While I'm pounding him in the back with both fists, I look off in the distance and see the two colored girls disappearing in the dark. They're walking fast and looking back at us. Then Charles throws me into the bar ditch on my back among a bunch of wet weeds. While I'm trying to get up and get the crap off of my back, Charles gets in that Hudson and drives off, slinging a little gravel toward me. That doesn't look too good for me. I stand in the road watching those red taillights moving on away when he hits the brakes, and I think maybe he changed his mind about leaving me here, but then he turns off to the west on another road, heads for that old barn with the little shack close by.

  By the time I get to the barn, I'm soaking wet from the rain. The light has gone off in that little shack, but now I see that it's just a piece of a shack, has two sides missing so that the roof slumps to the ground. I must've been mistaken about the light. The Hudson's parked in front of the barn, barn door swung out a little. When I stick my head inside, I think I hear a hog grunt. I smell something sour.

  "Charles," I say. "You in here, Charles?" I go on in but I don't like it a whole lot. Sure enough, I hear a hog over in the corner. I wait a little, then I see some pens. Don't see a hog. Too dark. I walk to the middle of the barn, then to the left, looking for that hog. "Charles. You in here?"

  I hear a voice that comes from behind me. "I'll make you a proposition, Bobby."

  I wheel around, look close, think maybe I can see him leaning up against the top rail of that hog pen with his side to me. It's too dark to be sure. He sounds out of breath. I don't say anything, hear a grunt again and now I see that hog sticking his nose through the boards trying to get a smell of Charles.

  "I'll give you what you're after if you give me what I'm after."

  "No deal," I say.

  "Maybe you don't have a choice."

  "I'll walk back to Fresno."

  "I don't doubt that, but getting back to Fresno, or Chowchilla even, is not what you're after. Is it?"

  "You raped her. I'd like to break your head open."

  "I did not, sonofabitch!"

  I see a little movement out of him and something hits me in the stomach, felt like a fist, but he was too far away for that. A big whish of air comes out of me. I'm bent over trying to suck air. It's slow going. While I'm bent over, I feel around in the straw on the ground, find the lump he hit me in the stomach with. Feels like a big pulley.

  "You forced Prissy," I say, finally. "I saw you. You held her down. You hit her. Jesus, Charles. You raped her."

  "She got in the front seat by herself, spread her legs by herself. I didn't get a chance to do it. She gave me and her both bloody noses butting heads. Damn near knocked me out. Hard-headed goddamn nigger. Got a loose front tooth."

  "You raped her, Charles."

  "She's just a hot little woman, a little too wild but then all broncs have to be broke if you want to ride."

  "She's just a kid."

  "You sound like you never touched her yourself."

  "Charles! Goddamn it. I didn't rape her."

  "I didn't do anything to her, Bobby. You fucked her. Not me."

  "I didn't force her."

  "I didn't do anything. You're just like your papa. Sit down over there in the hay." He shines a flashlight into the corner across from him, and the light hits my eyes like the full sun. "Your ears are still virgins, so they may bleed a little, but I'm going to tell you what you've been wanting to hear. I'm going to tell you the truth about your family and mine. So sit your ass down on those ropes and listen to me, if you can stand to hear the truth. I'll tell you how Lenny died, if I can get this hog to shut up." And he kicks the old hog on the snout that's sticking through the boards. Hog oinks and takes a walk around the pen, rooting the ground with that stub nose and snorting.

  I figure I'll try Charles out on this one. May be worth taking a chance. The hay's a little damp, so I sit on some ropes hanging down from wooden supports and coiling around in the hay. Charles leaves the flashlight on, sets it on its end, leaning it against the barn wall so the beam lights part of the sloping roof. He sits on some rope
s too.

  "Start the night before Lenny got killed," I tell him. "He got out of bed in the middle of the night and never came home. I didn't see him until the next day. Where'd he go?"

  "Pushy, pushy. Okay, have it your way, but it's going to cost you extra. It was two o'clock in the morning on the day he died, and he caught us out on Beacon Road. Helen had all her clothes off and I was on top of her when Lenny jerked open the car door and pointed his pistol at us. She even had her socks off cause she liked to have the bottom of her feet rubbed. This is the pistol he used," he says bringing it out of his back pocket.

  I still have that pulley in my hand, and I figure I can break open his skull if I have to, but it isn't much compared to his pistol. The hog is back again, but Charles doesn't notice.

  "Lenny wanted Helen out of the car and wouldn't even let her get her clothes first. He just wanted me the hell out of there. But when I drove off he put a couple of bullets in the back of my dad's car. Helen was screaming. 'Just my panties, Lenny, please. Just my panties." Lenny had no mercy. 'No panties for the pitiful,' he said. Helen was my girl, not Lenny's. But she was just a whore anyway. I kept telling him that, tried to tell him that no girl was worth what he was doing, but he wouldn't listen. 'It's Helen's turn now. I'll come kill you later,' he said. But he sounded a little undecided about me. Then he shot up my dad's car as I was driving off. He sure had a bad case of wanting to kill me. Put a bullet an inch from my head. I really thought he would kill Helen. I would have gone to the police, but then I didn't have a lot to do with them if I could help it. Wouldn't have saved her life anyway, if he'd really decided to kill her. At first I couldn't figure out how Lenny knew we were out there. It was two o'clock in the morning for christ's sake. But then I remembered. Before Lenny came, a pickup drove by. It had its lights off and came by slow so we didn't even know it was there until it had gone past. Helen heard something, so I raised up and saw the tail end of a pickup. Didn't recognize it then, but later, I realized it was that goddamn papa of yours. He sneaks around at night spying on people. Peeks in parked cars. That's the only way Lenny could have found out."

  "But you were messing around with Lenny's girl. I saw 'em together. She was his girl."

  "She was my girl. We had some trouble and he stepped in behind my back. He could have stayed away from her, and she would have stayed mine. But that was just the way Lenny operated. He always wanted whatever his friends had. I had Helen, so he wanted her. Just like your papa. He saw my mother with my dad and so he wanted her. If he'd left her alone everything would have been okay, but he wouldn't leave her alone."