Candlemoth

  In September the shit really hit the fan.

  Whites stormed the University of Mississippi when James Meredith was scheduled to enter and enroll. Governor Ross Barnett ordered the State Troopers to stop the kid from getting in. JFK sent the Deputy Attorney General and seven hundred and fifty Federal Marshals down there to ensure that Meredith was given safe passage.

  Later, Ross Barnett was urged to rebel against JFK by a vast crowd of whites in Jackson Stadium. The Ole Miss College Band, all decked out in Confederate uniform, brought that crowd to their feet for a rendition of 'Dixie'.

  James Meredith would not attend his first classes until October, and even then two hundred arrests would be made.

  In the same month JFK - a man who would be alive for only thirteen months more - imposed an arms blockade after telling the world that Russia possessed missile sites in Cuba. He lifted that blockade in November, and in December eleven hundred and thirteen of the original Bay of Pigs invaders were ransomed for $53,000,000.

  Seemed the world had twisted on its axis. Seemed people had gotten their ideas all choked up with McCarthy and discrimination and Castro and how Marilyn might have been murdered because of who she loved.

  These things were real, but not so real as to actually reach us where we lived.

  Not until December, Christmas coming, and it was carried home so swiftly, so mercilessly, that there was nothing we could do but face the truth.

  The world had gone mad, and finally, at last, that madness came to Greenleaf.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Ironically, it would have been Nathan's birthday today.

  More ironically, Mr. West chose to speak to me. I could not remember the last time he had spoken directly to me. Perhaps two weeks, maybe a month. Down here in D-Block you lost track of time. Left without your exercise for forty- eight hours you didn't know if it was day or night. I'm sure they changed the times the lights were put off and on. Disorientating. You got confused.

  Anyhows, Mr. West came down, he looked through the grille, and he said: You're a fucking animal, Ford. What are you?

  And I said: An animal, boss.

  And he said: Sure as shit is shit you're an animal.

  And then he laughed.

  I could see his legs through the spaces between the bars. Could have almost reached them from where I sat. Would never have made it. The man moved like a leopard. My hand would have been out through the bars and he would've broken my wrist with a billy club in a heartbeat. Less than a heartbeat.

  Seems to me the only good thing you ever did was kill some nigra, he went on. And now they gonna fry your ass for it. Fucking ironic or what, eh?

  And then he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a cigarette, lit it. He inhaled once and then, smiling through the grille, he dropped the cigarette to the floor and ground it to dust beneath the sole of his shoe. Did it on purpose.

  Ground it so fine it could never have been retrieved and re- rolled.

  And then he crouched on his haunches and peered through the bars at me. For a moment there was an expression of sympathy.

  Some folks are here 'cause they deserve it, he started. And then there's some folks that are here to pay for all of our sins. You're here 'cause you're just too fucking stupid to know better, Ford. That's the simplicity of it. Seems to me there was a time some way back when you did something you decided was worth buryin' yourself for, eh? Always the way. If you're not here for what they said you done, then sure as shit is brown and smells bad you're here for what you think you done. An' don't tell me I ain't right, 'cause I know I am.

  The sympathetic expression folded seamlessly into one of disgust and disdain.

  Whatever the hell it was, boy, you felt bad enough to get yourself killed for it.

  Mr. West, despite everything, knew when he'd caught a nerve, and once caught he'd twist it like some vicious and sadistic orthodontist. Some said he could read minds. Some said he could sense the tiniest tics and flinches in your expression and catch those like a frog catching flies. Never missed, always satisfied, always ready for more.

  He stood up, the caustic sneer ever-present, and walked slowly away.

  Mr. West's words had been timed perfectly, for he knew where I hurt, he knew where my wounds were, and he played at them ceaselessly.

  Seemed to me Mr. West had chosen me as his raison d'etre, at least for now, at least until I walked the walk and sat in the Big Chair. That's what he wanted; that's what would make him happy.

  That was Nathan's birthday, and it was remembering this that made me think of Greenleaf once more. Made me think of a particular day; the day the world made it clear that Nathan Verney and I were not, and never would be, the same.

  Seems to me now that all everyone wanted to do was fuck everyone else.

  You could sense it in the atmosphere.

  We were all the same age - sixteen, going on seventeen - and we hung around a soda shop called Benny's. Benny was Benny Amundsen, an immigrant from some place in Europe, a good man, an honest man, but a man who walked a fine line himself due to his own non-American status.

  Benny's had a juke box, an ancient battered work of art. That juke box played maybe ten tunes, twelve on a good day, and though the records skipped and skidded, and sometimes you didn't hear a damned thing at all, it was still the center of the universe as far as the Greenleaf teenagers were concerned.

  That day there were maybe twenty kids in all. Guys wearing skinny-legged pants and tee-shirts, girls wearing frocks, hair made up in beehives like Martha & The Vandellas or somesuch. They danced a little, they laughed, drank their sodas, and you could smell the tension in the air. Like I said, everyone wanted to fuck everyone else, though had they been presented with such an opportunity they more than likely would not have known what to do with it.

  Nathan and I were seated near the window. Nathan had been folding a napkin into something like a bird. I had been watching him, amazed at how such large hands could do something so delicate and fragile.

  I went for soda, stood there at the counter minding my own business, and it was in that moment, hesitating between straight cream or strawberry float, that I sensed a presence beside me.

  I turned. She was there. Sheryl Rose Bogazzi. Long auburn hair, eyelashes like the wings of a bird taking off into the sunset, her white blouse stretched tight across her breasts.

  I felt myself blushing.

  'Hi there, Daniel,' she purred, cat-like.

  I felt a stirring somewhere beneath my stomach.

  'Sheryl Rose,' I said, and sort of half-smiled as best I could. I think it came out like a pained grimace.

  'What you getting?' she asked.

  I shrugged, felt stupid for a moment. 'Some soda.'

  She giggled, raised her hand to her mouth as if hiding her teeth. She needn't have done that. She had perfect teeth. 'I know soda,' she said, and sort of took a step towards me. 'Kinda soda?'

  'Don't know,' I replied. 'Maybe cream, maybe strawberry float.'

  She nodded as if understanding my dilemma. 'Got sick on strawberry float one time,' she said. She moved her head then, her hair flicking back over her shoulder. I wanted to touch her hair. Wanted to touch her face. I blushed again.

  'Then it'll have to be cream then,' I said.

  'Cream,' she purred, and I nearly died right there in my shoes.

  'You want one?' I asked.

  'You buying?'

  I nodded. 'Sure I am.'

  'Well thank you, Daniel Ford… I'll take a cream soda too.'

  I paid for the sodas, she thanked me again, and then she smiled that smile that was all her own and I couldn't think of a word to say.

  'I'll see y'around, Daniel Ford,' she said, and she leaned a little closer, and in the briefest of moments I felt her fingers graze my arm. I remember how cool they were, cool and a little moist from where she'd held the glass a moment before, and even as she walked away I watched those damp fingerprints evaporate from my skin.


  I walked back to the table in slow-motion, my heart beating, my pulse racing. I sat down, I glanced across the room towards her, and even as I did I saw her glance back at me. My unsteady heart missed another beat.

  'And where the hell's my soda?' Nathan asked.

  I looked at him, I didn't hear a thing, and I smiled.

  'Dumb-ass retard,' he said, and slid out from his chair to fetch his own drink.

  It was an awkward situation already, there were jealousies brewing, things unspoken, things said that should have stayed private, and when Sheryl Rose Bogazzi felt a hand on her breast she slapped someone's face.

  I turned first, saw Larry James and Marty Hooper standing there. Marty was red as a beet, the one side of his face bore the unmistakable imprint of a hand, and Larry, Marty's sidekick and consigliere, was already defending him.

  Why I stood up I don't know.

  Hell, yes I do.

  I stood up because it was Sheryl Rose Bogazzi.

  Had it been someone else, anyone else except maybe Caroline Lanafeuille, I would have stayed right where I was and kept my mouth shut.

  But no, I was besotted and in love and, as such, certifiably insane.

  And so I stood up, and Marty Hooper was immediately in my face, his expression one of challenge and self-defense. His manner was ugly and brutish, and I knew from previous experience that only folks who had something to hide became that mad that quickly.

  Thus I knew he had touched Sheryl Rose Bogazzi.

  He had committed a crime of immeasurable and unforgivable significance.

  'What did you do?' I asked, my tone hostile and offensive.

  Marty Hooper sneered. He sort of looked sideways towards his friends as if to ask them who I was, what was I doing here.

  I sensed Sheryl Rose to my left. I felt that unmistakable presence.

  'I said what did you do, Marty?'

  'And what the hell business is it of yours what I did?' he snapped back.

  'You touched her,' I said. 'You damned well touched her, Marty.'

  Marty bared his teeth in contempt. 'I'll damned well touch you, Daniel Ford,' he said.

  I pushed Marty Hooper.

  Marty Hooper laughed and pushed me back.

  'Freakin' loser,' he hissed. 'Freakin' loser, Ford.'

  The kids in the soda shop stepped away simultaneously, and suddenly there was an arena, a boxing ring, and I realized even in that moment that I was gonna get a pounding.

  Marty Hooper was faster, taller, stronger, but more importantly he possessed greater confidence than me. I was defending Sheryl Rose's honor, perhaps the greatest and most powerful motivation for an all-out onslaught against this criminal of the heart. But Marty Hooper had done this before, and I had not.

  The first roundhouse collided with my left ear.

  I was sure I tasted blood. I saw thirty-five colors in stereo and howled like a stuck pig.

  Larry James was laughing. 'Asshole,' he was saying. 'What an asshole this guy is.'

  Sheryl Rose turned away, her expression one of terror and grief and panic and sympathy all rolled into one.

  I came back then, came back like a rabid hound, and even as I started in on Marty Hooper I felt this hand on my collar, and suddenly I was jerked backwards, almost lifted wholesale from the ground.

  Before I knew what had happened I was standing near the window and Nathan was there ahead of Marty Hooper, his fists raised, his eyes wide, his teeth bared like a mad thing.

  'You want some too?' Marty asked. He started laughing. 'This asshole wants some too… come on then, asshole, come get a piece of me.'

  When Nathan Verney hit Marty Hooper, Marty went down.

  He didn't so much fall as go down.

  It was hard to describe, harder to demonstrate when we spoke of it later.

  Marty Hooper just flat-fuck fell.

  Boom.

  Down.

  Like a stone.

  And Marty didn't get up.

  There was silence.

  You could have heard a gnat's fart.

  I stood there, jaw to the floor, eyes like a bug, hair on the nape of my neck standing to attention like a porcupine.

  Larry James said it. No doubt about it. I even remember the way he said it. Like the smack of a baseball bat. Like a gunshot.

  Nigger!

  Marty Hooper stirred.

  Someone came forward and helped him to his feet.

  When he realized what had happened he was even more shocked and embarrassed than before. But now the source of his ridicule was neither Sheryl Rose nor me. It was the tall black teenager standing just three or four feet from him.

  Nathan Verney had put him down with one punch, and he believed he could never live that down.

  And then he said it too. 'Nigger! Damned nigger!'

  And though he didn't say it the same, it sounded worse.

  Now it was out there. Now it had been repeated by someone, and there were those among that crew who would have said or done anything to remain involved with these people.

  And so someone else said it. I don't know who. It didn't matter.

  Nigger!

  By the time it had caught and become a chant Nathan Verney was already at the door.

  I was beside him in a heartbeat, and we went out through that door quickly and quietly and hurried down the boardwalk towards the street.

  'Go,' Nathan was saying. 'Go, Daniel… just go!' I could read a real sense of panic and terror in his eyes, something that I would see only years later when we were grown.

  I remember the feeling of the sun. It was brutal. I felt naked.

  I remember glancing back towards Sheryl and she was looking right at me. Her expression told me everything I needed to know. She felt for us, perhaps for me, but she could do nothing. She belonged here, Nathan did not, and if I was close with Nathan then I didn't belong here either. Hell, they were just honest white kids hanging out, having some fun, and Marty Hooper and Larry James had gotten a little overheated, granted, but no reason to go overboard.

  I smiled at her, I remember that, but she didn't smile back. She looked away, looked towards the floor, anywhere but right back at me. And it was at that point she became something else, someone else. I felt a sense of loss, and yet again a sense of relief. For as long as I could recall I had been torn between her and Caroline, torn between the two of them like a man strung between two carts travelling in opposite directions. I could only have held out so long before feeling something give, before watching myself unravel at the seams and collapse inside. In that moment, the moment I turned towards her, she had betrayed me, she had become one of them. I believed it would have been impossible to ever forgive her. I let her go, I know I did. At that very moment I let her go, and even through those seconds of panic I found myself thanking some higher force that Caroline Lanafeuille had not been there to witness my bruised pride. Caroline retained her pedestal, while Sheryl Rose Bogazzi's crown slipped and rolled soundlessly to the gutter.

  By the time we reached the street there must have been five or six behind us. The guys came out, the girls stayed inside, and I remember hearing Benny Amundsen's voice over the hubbub.

  Take your trouble outside, he was saying. You boys take your trouble outside.

  Benny knew what was happening, would have been the first to realize it, but he would do nothing. Benny could not be seen to side with a negro.

  When the first stone came we started running. Nathan was taller than me, his legs longer, and had it been a race he would have outstripped me in a heartbeat.

  But he didn't, he kept with me step for step, and when we reached the turning at the end of the street he actually hung back to let me turn first in case we collided.

  Had he not done that he would never have been hit.

  The stone caught him on the cheek, and to this day I can recall the sound as clearly as if it were but five seconds ago. A dull thud, like someone thumping a side of beef hanging in the shed. And even as he howled I saw bloo
d, and in seeing blood everything changed.

  Blood on the teeth is an expression I heard once. Once the animal has blood on its teeth it never loses that taste. Craves it. Lives for it.