I took a turn at the oyster table, wearing a heavy glove on my left hand, and prying the oyster loose from its shells with the blunt-nosed knife. Soon, Niles and Ike were on either side of me. Betty walked up to be beside Ike, which made me wonder why Fraser wasn’t standing beside her boyfriend. “Why haven’t I seen Fraser?”
“Said she couldn’t come,” Niles said.
I loped over to where Molly was sitting at a table full of cheerleaders. Since reuniting with Chad last month, she had studiously avoided me, even in class, where we sat across the aisle from each other. I had gradually come to accept that she was part and parcel of a life that I would never be part of, but even in my disappointment, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her. She was too vulnerable and too basically decent, in spite of what she’d done to me, for me to work up any great fury against her. My voice was more patient than accusing when I asked: “Where are Chad and Fraser? They get sick or something?”
For the first time since that night at the Piggy Park, she met my eyes and lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know, Leo. I don’t think their father wanted them to come.”
“You think, or you know?” I demanded.
Looking guilty, she said, “I know.”
“Why?” I knew the answer before I asked.
“Mr. Rutledge put his foot down when he heard there was a party at a colored family’s home,” she said with another shrug.
“What about your family?”
“I told them the cheerleaders were having a special practice,” Molly said, meeting my eyes levelly. Her gaze seemed to be asking for a return of the close friendship we’d once had.
Flustered, I turned quickly and went to the kitchen, where Mrs. Jefferson was preparing huge bowls of coleslaw and baked beans. I asked her permission to use the phone.
She said, “Sweetie, there’s one in the back bedroom where you’ll have a little privacy.”
I dialed Chad’s number. As I was expecting, his father answered.
“May I speak to Chad, Mr. Rutledge?” I asked, my anger veering off past courtesy.
“May I inquire about the subject of this call?” Mr. Rutledge asked. I realized that I had never recovered from my visceral hatred of him after that first meeting at the yacht club.
“It’s sort of personal.”
“So are all phone calls. But I am screening Chad’s and Fraser’s phone calls tonight. It’s a father’s prerogative. You’ll understand someday when you have your own kids.”
“I’m sure I will. But can you leave Chad a message for me?”
“I’ll tell him you called, Leo,” Mr. Rutledge said.
“No, I want you to deliver a message.”
“Go ahead; I’ve got pen and paper ready.”
“Tell him he won’t be playing in the state semifinal this Saturday,” I said. “He can turn in his uniform tomorrow. Would you like me to repeat that?”
“No, you little bastard. I got down every word,” he said. “You know I can make a couple of phone calls tonight and get your mama and daddy and that nigger coach fired.”
“Make those phone calls,” I said. “But your son isn’t playing in that game against Gaffney.”
“You don’t have that kind of power, Toad.” Mr. Rutledge added my nickname sarcastically.
“I’m cocaptain of this team,” I said. “If my other cocaptain agrees that Chad is bad for the team’s spirit, we can go to the coach and have that kid kicked off the team.”
“My son doesn’t socialize with niggers.”
“Then he doesn’t play football with them, either,” I said.
“You don’t need to have me as your enemy in this town, Leo.”
“We’ve been enemies since the day we met,” I said as I hung up the phone.
Returning to the party, I suddenly doubted the wisdom and hotheadedness of what I had just done, and gathered Coach Jefferson, Ike, and Niles to tell them about it. I tried to replicate the entire conversation I’d had with Worth Rutledge, then awaited Coach Jefferson’s wrath, which could be intimidating in both its ferocity and its suddenness. But none came. Ike and Niles looked troubled but not offended.
Then Coach Jefferson surprised me: he looked at his watch and said, “I bet that Chad gets here in less than five minutes. I know boys and I know dads. All boys and all dads want to play in championship games. Do you know what is hilarious about this? You know who’s having the most fun at this party?”
We looked around, and I heard Ike laughing, then Niles. And they both said the same name together: “Wormy Ledbetter!”
In less than ten minutes, Chad’s car pulled onto Coach Jefferson’s street. Chad and Fraser were both running as they came through the back gate. Chad walked up to Coach Jefferson, gave me an executioner’s look, then said, “Sorry I’m late, Coach. Had a little car trouble.”
“Can happen to anyone, Chad,” he said. “You and your sister, get yourself some oysters.” He then turned and winked at the three of us. “Boys,” he said, “what you just saw was good coaching. Mighty fine coaching. We need Chad for this Gaffney game.”
And need him we did. The Gaffney fullback and linebacker whom we had studied on film all week looked five times bigger in real life. He was wild-eyed, possessed, and stacked with muscles in places it didn’t look like muscles were supposed to grow. He scored four touchdowns in the first half, and Gaffney led 28-0 when we went into the locker room. On the blackboard, Coach Jefferson made the necessary adjustments, inventing five misdirection plays that would offset the overaggressiveness of the Gaffney linebacker. His number was 55, and his satanic, all-seeing eyes would enter my personal country of nightmare for months. He ran over me like I was a toddler in his driveway. When I tackled him—a rare event that night—it felt like I had slammed into the side of a mountain. We scored three times by air in the second half, and Wormy broke loose for two long touchdowns, but we lost the game, 42-35. It was, by far, the worst game of my career.
I would repress number 55’s name and trained myself not to think of him, even after he became a star at Georgia and in the pros. But I would eventually recognize those flame-throwing eyes when I encountered them once again twenty years later, in an alley in San Francisco when I met Macklin Tijuana Jones for a second time.
· · ·
On the first Saturday in my final January of high school, I drove my car over to St. Jude’s Orphanage and parked in the gravel lot next to Sister Polycarp’s Chevy station wagon. I signed the guest registry and jotted down my time of arrival, then ran the stairs two at a time to the recreation room. Ike and Betty were shooting a game of eight ball when I walked in. Starla was reading The Cat in the Hat to a young girl I had never seen before.
“Pick up a cue, white one,” Ike said, grinning at me. “And I’ll show you how to use it.”
I hated the game of pool because it was manly and supercharged and carried an aura of tough-guy danger. Plus, I couldn’t play it worth a damn. But Ike looked like he was practicing an art form when he applied blue chalk to his cue stick and lined up his shot. Then Betty ran the table on him, while he watched with a connoisseur’s admiration for her game.
“Where’s this place Sheba and Trevor are the star attractions tonight?” Betty asked.
“Big John’s,” Ike said. “It’s on East Bay.”
“You going?” I asked.
“You seem to have trouble with this concept, so listen up, Toad. I am a soul brother. Great rhythm, great style, great looks, great moves. I mean, I’m the whole package, just like Betty here. But we got one big hang-up. We live in the South, where our people have had a tad of trouble with your people. Your people seem to like to hang our people from trees. So my people have gotten into the habit of not going near yours. You follow me? Big John’s is a white bar. We aren’t going to hear Sheba and Trevor play shit.”
“I know Big John. He’s an ex-pro football player. A great guy. I’ve been in his bar, and black guys come in. My father and I were in there one night when three of his team
mates came in, all black. It’ll hurt the twins’ feelings if we don’t go.”
“Are you and Niles going?” I asked Starla.
“Niles is taking Fraser,” she said.
“So, can I take you?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Is he suave,” Ike said, “or what?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Starla looked at me in surprise. When I’d asked her out before, she seemed to think it was out of friendship.
“No, I’m a taxi service.”
“Tell her you’re asking her out on a date, Toad,” Betty demanded with a sigh.
“I’m asking you out on a date,” I said. I had found myself thinking about Starla a lot lately, since Molly had drifted back to society’s herd. Quite a lot.
“A date,” she said. “It sounds so normal, doesn’t it? Why, yes, Toad, I’d love to. Thank you,” she said. “Do you know they’re tossing me and Niles out, right after graduation? Sister Polycarp just gave us the big news. The second we get our diploma, we’re on the streets. She keeps bugging us about how old we are, and we don’t know. We can’t even guess. Hell, I might be forty. No one’s ever found our birth certificates. The only thing I know is that Niles has always been around. He’s always been there.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“He’s been tight as a tick with Chad ever since we got back from the senior trip,” Ike inserted from the pool table.
Betty snorted. “And I don’t like it. I don’t trust Chad. He’s got that white-boy chip on his shoulder. Even when he smiles, I can feel that mean streak.”
“You two want to double-date with me and Starla?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” Ike said. “I’ll pick you up at seven. You sure about Big John’s?”
“I’ll have Father call Big John,” I said. “We’ll make sure.” “My parents will be pissed if they have to identify me at the morgue,” Ike said.
“Mine won’t,” Betty and Starla said at the same time, and it cracked up all the orphans in earshot.
A bell rang. We joined the procession of orphans down the dark stairwell that led to a large, slatternly garden, though it was elegantly designed and must have once been a showcase. The brickwork was harmonious and pleasing and had been laid with expertise and a gift for order. St.
Jude’s garden made Mother crazy and distressed, but she knew the cost and hard labor involved in revising a garden of such stature. The garden was now used as a venue for exercise where the orphans stretched their legs by walking the brick pathways every day as one of the younger nuns stood guard at the library window. At the first sign of carnality or hand-holding, she would blow hard on a referee’s whistle, its piercing voice putting an instant stop to any scrimmage of hormones disturbing the peace in the garden below.
Ike and Betty walked about ten feet behind as the eagle-eyed nun watched over us. At first, Starla and I walked in silence in the out-of-season, hibernating garden. Because of Mother’s passion for flowers, I understood that we were passing over a blind world of roots and bulbs and seeds that would burst into the bright fire of spring. The earth was sleeping beneath us, but waiting with the infinite patience of taproots and stems for their April run to the light. Now we moved through paths where nothing was green and the city paid homage to the necessity of withering. In silence, we passed over a nation of ferns and stalks.
“I need to talk to you about Niles,” Starla said as we turned down the pathway that bisected the garden.
“What about him?”
“Something’s wrong,” she said, in obvious distress. “He’s hanging around too much with Chad. Betty’s right: it’s creepy.”
“He’s nuts over Fraser,” I said. “No mystery in that.”
“It’s something else,” Starla said, shaking her head. “Niles has always told me everything. He’s got secrets now. Things he’s keeping from me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it as well as I know how to write my name in blood on that wall,” she said, pointing to the mud-red brick chapel attached to St. Jude’s.
“Niles can take care of himself,” I said. “You know that better than anyone.”
“He goes out every weekend. He and Fraser double-date with Chad and Molly. You know that Chad and Molly are back together, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “They walk so close together at school that you couldn’t separate them with a piece of cigarette paper.”
“I never trust it when couples are that affectionate in public,” she said. “It’s like they’re hiding something. A cover-up for something else.”
“I wouldn’t know. Me and Molly—we never got to that stage. We never got anywhere.”
She nodded, her brown eyes unreadable. Before I could ask what she was thinking, Starla took me by surprise. She reached over, lifted my chin, and kissed me on the mouth. It was not a sisterly kiss. It was a kiss I felt all the way down to my toes.
She drew back and asked, “You’ve been wanting to kiss me, haven’t you, Leo? Did you like it?”
I couldn’t speak so I nodded, dumbfounded.
She laughed, her hands on my shoulders. “Then why don’t we fall in love with each other? Like Niles and Fraser? Ike and Betty? Bet we could be happy like them too. Look at them.” I turned to see Ike and Betty in a passionate embrace, locked into a full, lip-smacking kiss that seemed just right.
The centerpiece of the garden was a live oak that must have been well over a hundred years old. I thought it hid them from the watchtower in the library, but the whistle blasted out in all its shrillness. Ike and Betty reluctantly parted, then resumed their promenade, not even holding hands, but smiling brightly for all the world to see. Starla was right: they looked happy.
Starla and I joined them, and the four of us exchanged conspiratorial smiles.
The bar at Big John’s was small enough to fit in a railroad car, and it was filled with Citadel cadets when we arrived. It looked like a whites-only crowd for sure, and Ike cast me a glance as though I had invited him to be an honored guest at his own lynching. Then two black cadets came in; coincidentally, Charles Foster and Joseph Shine, the first two blacks to integrate The Citadel. They were delighted to hear that Ike had just won a football scholarship to their college. Outside, we joined their table while inside Big John’s seethed with beer-guzzling pods of cadets with a high percentage of plebes. On the other side of the small courtyard I spotted Chad and Molly with Niles and Fraser. They were sitting at a table with two couples I didn’t recognize, but they had those telltale tans that signified yacht club and regattas and a working knowledge of coconut palms during Christmas breaks in Martinique. Big John’s was crowded enough to draw the attention of the fire chief, who stood at the front door, blocking the entrance to any latecomers. As Ike had predicted, the news of Sheba’s beauty had spread like a virus through the Corps of Cadets.
Trevor came through a back door by the kitchen, and made his way to an upright piano. He sat down and began playing The Citadel alma mater, which sent all the cadets scrambling to stand at attention and place their caps back on their heads. Sheba came through the door and sang the alma mater in a breathy, sexual manner that was unprecedented in the history of that song. The bar was suffused with a strange combination of shock fringed with lust. When Sheba came to the last line of the song and all the cadets lifted their caps and waved them in the air, Trevor changed the tenor of the whole evening by blasting away at the piano keys with the most rousing version of “Dixie” I’d ever heard. You could barely make out Sheba’s voice above the roar. But then she quieted things with her haunting interpretation of “We Shall Overcome.” A full-bloom knowledge of the music of our time was one of my generation’s identifying legacies, so we realized she had fooled us into an American trilogy that she would end with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” bringing the respectable number of Yankee cadets to their feet.
As Sheba held the crowd in thrall, Starla turned to me, put her arms around m
y neck, and began kissing me. Fabulous though it was, I was self-conscious about making out in public. My face was red when I pulled back from her and surveyed the crowd to see if anyone had witnessed the scene. As far as I could tell, the only one who saw it was Molly, and she clapped her hands in slow, mock applause when she caught my eye.
“It’s okay, Leo,” Starla told me. “Lots of people kiss in public. I’ve watched them.”
“People like us?”
“People just like us,” she said. “By the way, you going to the junior-senior prom?”
“I didn’t go last year,” I said.
“You’re going this year,” she told me. Sheba began her rendition of “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” which sent the cadets into a frenzy once more, and Big John raised his huge right hand to restore some modicum of order in his joint. It was a shameless playing to the crowd, but that came naturally to Sheba and Trevor.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “It doesn’t even happen till May.”
“Ike’s already asked Betty.”
“Oh. So, you wanna go with me?” I asked.
“No, I can’t,” she said.
“Why all this hinting around, then? Why won’t you go with me?” “I could never afford a prom dress,” she said.
An idea struck me with the force of a thunderbolt, and I blurted out, “I can make you a dress.”
“What?”
“Mother raised me to be a so-called feminist, whatever the hell that is,” I said. “I made her a dress a couple of years ago, for Mother’s Day. Sheba sews great too. She can help me.”
“What about shoes?” Starla asked. “Your mama teach you how to be a cobbler?”
“Sheba’s got a closet full of shoes,” I said. “Don’t worry, we can work out the details.”
Starla reached over and touched Betty on the shoulder. “Leo asked me to the junior-senior prom!”
Betty and Starla embraced, then Betty punched me hard on the shoulder with a fist that could boast of power. My shoulder hurt for a whole day and it affected my aim on my paper route the next morning. Ike turned around and congratulated me, then asked me if I wanted to double with Betty and him. I had stumbled into normal teenage life by accident, and everything about it felt right. The Toad years were leaving me behind. I was saying farewell to the boy who had been tortured for years by the accuracy of that name. It had never occurred to me that a girl as cute as Starla could like me as much as she seemed to. We kissed some more, and when I pulled back, I could feel the loosening and the possession take place. Staring into Starla Whitehead’s melancholy eyes, I fell in love that night, and inadvertently began the long, agonizing process of ruining my life.