Devil on My Heels

  I lean against a two-toned black-and-white Chevy a few yards away and sip my cherry Coke, waiting for him to notice me. Rayanne parks herself on the hood.

  Willy Podd’s truck is two cars over from Chase’s. He’s got the door open and he’s sitting sideways on the passenger side with his feet on the running board. Earl is leaning against the open door. I can’t look at either of them without seeing their ugly faces looming over Rosemary at lunch earlier. I shift my attention to Chase. He’s studying a road map he’s got spread out on his steering wheel.

  “Hey, Chase!” Willy shouts. “I think somebody’s here to see you.” He jerks his chin in my direction. I want to smack his creepy face.

  Earl swaggers over and perches himself on the hood of Chase’s car, bumping another kid out of his way. Willy follows him. He leans against the hood but doesn’t get on it.

  Chase doesn’t pay either of them any mind. He’s grinning over at me. He lifts a pack of cigarettes from the dashboard, sticks one cigarette behind his ear, flips open his Zippo and lights another one. “You here to hobnob with the hep crowd, Dove?” I ignore this. He knows I don’t come to Whelan’s after school.

  I walk over to his car and stand by the passenger door. Rayanne slides from the hood of the Chevy and comes up beside me.

  “Actually, I was hoping Earl here could give me lessons on how to be a hood ornament,” I say.

  Earl ignores this. But Chase laughs.

  “Hear tell some nigger paid you a visit last night,” Earl says. “Heard he set your barn on fire.”

  Willy is watching me with his squinty little eyes. He silently mouths the words nigger lover.

  “Nobody set fire to our barn,” I tell them. “It was lightning.”

  Willy starts rattling off at the mouth like some half-crazed jaybird. “Well, now . . . that’s not how I heard it. Nope. Uh-uh. I’m thinking more like somebody has it out for your daddy. One of the pickers, maybe.” He looks over at Chase, like he’s daring him to call him a liar. Chase keeps his eyes on that map of his. He’s acting like Willy isn’t even there.

  I have this sudden need to feel something solid. I put my hand on Chase’s side-view mirror. It’s like putting my hand on a hot griddle, but I don’t let go. “Since when did you start thinking?” I say.

  Willy just laughs at that.

  Earl laughs too. He pulls out his comb and runs it through his hair, which he’s been trying to grow longer so it’ll look like Willy’s. He grins over at Rayanne.

  Rayanne ignores him, as usual. She bends over, resting her arms on the passenger door, and says to Chase, “You see who it was?”

  “It wasn’t anybody, Rayanne,” I say. I swear her brain goes on a vacation whenever she’s around that boy. And it’s starting to get on my nerves.

  Chase doesn’t bother to give Rayanne an answer. He folds up the map and sticks it in his glove compartment. Then he leans over and opens the door on the passenger side. “Come on,” he says to me, “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Tell them,” I say to him, looking at all the kids who have gravitated over to Chase’s car to find out what’s going on. “Tell them it was lightning.” I slam the car door shut and back away.

  He takes a long drag from his cigarette. I notice he’s taken the bandage off his hand. There’s an angry red blister on the spot between his thumb and forefinger. “You all heard Dove, here. She says it was lightning.”

  Willy gives him a look, like he can’t be sure whose side Chase is on. But then his lip curls up on one side in an ugly sneer. He’s figured out Chase hasn’t agreed with me, he’s just repeated what I said.

  Chase glances around a few times, then he tells everybody hanging around his car to get lost, that he and I have private business to discuss.

  Earl slides off the hood. He and Willy head back to Willy’s truck. They punch each other in the shoulder a few times and laugh.

  Rayanne gives me a pleading look. I know she wants to stay. “Just give us a few minutes,” I tell her. “Chase’s got something he needs to explain.” I hand her my empty glass.

  As soon as Rayanne goes back inside Whelan’s, I turn to Chase. “You know darn good and well it was lightning that set our barn on fire. Why didn’t you just tell them outright?”

  Chase leans over and flings open the passenger door again. “Come on, Dove. Get in.”

  “I’m staying right where I am till you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I know that you said it was lightning. I never said one way or the other what caused that fire.”

  “If you saw somebody at our place last night, why didn’t you tell me in the kitchen?” I stare down at the burn on his hand. “Did you tell my dad?”

  “You want to hear what I got to say, then get in.” He tosses the lighted cigarette across the parking lot, just missing one of the waitresses who is scurrying by. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

  There doesn’t seem much point in being stubborn about this. I get in the car. If nothing else, it saves me a two-mile walk.

  It isn’t until Chase is halfway out of the parking lot that I suddenly remember Rayanne. When I look back at the front window of Whelan’s, there she is, looking for all the world like I’ve taken the last lifeboat and left her behind on a sinking ship.

  “Wait. We forgot Rayanne.”

  “Dove, she lives right here in town. She knows her way home.”

  “But I can’t just leave her there like that.” I know I’m going to get an earful from her about this later.

  Chase keeps on driving. With the top down, the wind blowing through my short hair tickles. It suddenly occurs to me that he hasn’t once said anything about my hair. It’s not like him to miss an opportunity to tease me.

  “There isn’t a single word of truth to what Willy said at Whelan’s,” I tell him.

  “Course not.” Chase leans back in his seat and rests his arm on the car door.

  “Then why act like it’s true?”

  He flips on the radio and fiddles with the tuner till he finds the station he wants. “I like your hair,” he says. “It looks good.”

  I search his face for hints of sarcasm and can’t find a one. “Don’t change the subject,” I tell him. “You know what this town is like. Things are only going to get worse if you let them think it was a colored person who set fire to our barn. They’ll get all riled up, making it out to be something it’s not.”

  He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I didn’t start this rumor, okay? I told you that this morning.”

  “If you didn’t start this rumor, who did?” I already have a pretty good idea, based on what Rayanne told me in homeroom. I just want to hear it from Chase.

  Chase shrugs and looks off to his left. His words float back to me, muffled by the wind. “Does it matter? The rumor’s already out there. People will either believe it or they won’t.”

  He is driving me crazy. “It was Willy Podd, wasn’t it?”

  Chase turns back to me. “Yeah, best I can tell.”

  I’m not surprised. Willy has never tried to hide his feelings about colored folks. He hates them and makes sure everybody knows it. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for him to hate coloreds. He just does. This latest story he’s spreading around is just one more way of announcing his hate to the world. “You can’t stand Willy Podd. Why are you letting him get away with telling lies about my barn?”

  Chase reaches over and runs his hand along the back of my neck. His touch is gentle. I don’t want him to stop. “Willy’d already started telling everybody his own version of what happened before I even got to school this morning.”

  “And you didn’t say anything to stop him?”

  “I tried, but by then everyone had pretty much bought into Willy’s story. I told them it was lightning that caused the fire. But then Willy started in about how it sounded to him like I might be trying to cover for somebody. That got everybody all fired up about why I’d do something like that when things around
here are getting—” Chase lets his hand drop from my neck and keeps his eyes on the road. The place where his hand has been feels suddenly cold.

  “Getting what?” I ask.

  “Look, Dove, this’ll all blow over in a few days. Let it go, okay?”

  “What’s my dad going to think when he hears this?”

  Chase shrugs. “He probably won’t think anything at all. He knows what’s been going on around here.”

  The strangest feeling comes over me when Chase says this. It doesn’t sound as if he’s talking about the usual stuff between coloreds and white folks. This is about something else. Something he and my dad know. And I don’t.

  11

  Delia sets a piece of key lime pie in front of me on the kitchen table when I get home. She makes the best key lime pie in all of Florida.

  She walks over to the screen door, folds her thick arms together, and makes little grunting noises at the piles of cinders that used to be our barn.

  “Good thing your daddy had that new barn of his built a few years back.”

  A novel lies open on the table. I flip through the pages.

  “Don’t you go losing my place,” Delia snaps.

  I am just about to ask her if she’s heard about those rumors Willy’s been spreading when the phone rings.

  “How could you leave me there like that!” Rayanne screams at me from the other end of the receiver.

  “Rayanne,” I say, “you live right there in town.”

  “You could have told me you were leaving.”

  “Chase pulled out before I had a chance. It wasn’t on purpose.” I’m eyeing my uneaten pie from across the room. I still have the fork in my hand. The phone cord won’t stretch far enough for me to reach the pie. My mouth is watering. “I’ve got to go, Rayanne,” I say.

  “Whidden Hadley asked me to the senior prom,” she says out of the blue.

  The senior prom is a big deal, especially if you’re only a sophomore and an upperclassman asks you to go. “When did he ask you?”

  “This afternoon. At Whelan’s.”

  “Well, now, see? That probably wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gone back inside to wait for me.”

  “Or he might have asked me some other time.”

  “Rayanne,” I groan. “Aren’t you excited?” Whidden Hadley has scummy teeth and breath so bad it could make a cow keel over. But he’s got a sweet nature.

  “Well of course I’m excited. Who wouldn’t be? It’s the senior prom.”

  This is followed by a long swell of silence. I’m thinking maybe she’s hung up now that she’s delivered her news.

  “Rayanne?”

  “Did Chase ask you to the prom?”

  It takes me a minute to realize Rayanne thinks Chase drove off with me this afternoon so that he could ask me to the prom.

  “No,” I tell her. “And I don’t expect he will.” I don’t bother to tell her that Chase isn’t much for formal dances. Formal anything, for that matter.

  Right about then somebody knocks on the screen door.

  “Come on in, Gator,” Delia shouts, not bothering to look to see if that’s who’s at the door. Gator usually shows up about this time every day, so it isn’t any surprise.

  He steps inside, carrying two big empty galvanized buckets. He lets the screen door bump against his shoulder, easing it closed. He nods my way, then crosses the kitchen and hands Delia the buckets, which she fills with water for the picking crew.

  “Hey, Gator,” I say.

  Gator’s staring out the kitchen window as if there is something going on outside he doesn’t want to miss. He looks over his shoulder at me and nods again. The gash in his forehead is less puckered today.

  “Gator?” Rayanne says. “You mean that colored boy?”

  “I have to go, Rayanne.” I hang up before she can say another word.

  Delia opens the cabinet under the sink and pulls out a stack of paper sacks. Gator gets this smile on his face like she’s about to hand him one of her key lime pies. I suddenly realize I’ve missed that old grin of his. I don’t recall him smiling all that much lately.

  Gator tucks the bags under one arm as Delia hands him the filled buckets. He takes everything out to the porch and comes back with two more empty pails.

  “Here, Gator,” I say, grabbing the plate of pie from the table and giving it to him. “Have some pie.” I have no idea what made me do that. I guess I was hoping to see Gator’s face light up again. But he only looks confused.

  Delia eyes me suspiciously. She thinks I’m up to something, which I’m not.

  Gator stands there holding the pie like he’s afraid it might explode if he makes one false move. I pass him the fork I’m still holding. “It’s clean,” I tell him. “I didn’t use it yet.”

  He gets this amused look on his face.

  Delia sets the last of the buckets by Gator’s feet. “You go on out on the porch and eat that,” she tells him.

  Gator doesn’t say a word. He just heads outside and dives right into that pie. I watch him through the screen door.

  “What you up to?” Delia asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing from where I’m standing.”

  “I thought he’d like some pie is all.” I go over to the counter where the rest of the pie sits and cut myself another slice.

  Gator’s back in less than a minute, empty plate in hand. He takes the other two buckets out to the porch. I stand at the back door and watch him carry them to the trailer that’s attached to one of our tractors. Eli’s sitting on the tractor, waiting for him. He lifts his cap and slides his arm across his forehead. When he gets down to help Gator with the buckets, I notice his movements are slow and stiff.

  “Delia,” I say, “you heard any rumors about our barn?”

  She tears off a piece of aluminum foil to cover what’s left of the pie and stands there holding it. “What kind of rumors?”

  “About how it might not have been lightning that caused the fire?” I savor the sweet tartness of the pie on my tongue, rolling it around in my mouth.

  The foil in her hand makes metallic rustling noises. “What you talkin’ about? Are folks saying it was something else?”

  “Good Lord Almighty! Stop answering my questions with questions.”

  Delia slaps the aluminum foil over the top of the pie and tucks it in. Then she grabs a wet dishrag and begins wiping the counter. She’s working at it so hard I’m sure she’s going to wear a hole in the Formica. “Don’t you have some homework to do?”

  Another question. I sigh and go back to enjoying my pie.

  By the end of the week, things seem to have settled down again. The kids at school have stopped asking me to tell them the story about my barn. Rosemary Howell has stopped stalking me in the halls between classes, and there haven’t been any more fires.

  As soon as the last bell rings, I head for the cemetery to read to Tory Ray Allister. It’s his turn. I try to be fair and give everyone equal time.

  Tory’s headstone is set way back behind the church, a few feet from the stone wall. It’s quiet and shady here. I lean against the side of the tombstone and begin reading from this book of medieval English verse I found in the library.

  Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair;

  Love is mighty agony, and love is mighty care;

  Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare;

  Love is wretched misery; to live with, it’s despair.

  “Maybe you aren’t missing much after all, Tory,” I tell him.

  From nowhere this voice says, “And just how would you know that?”

  The voice rockets me to my feet. I’m shaking from the roots of my hair to my toenails. Then I hear someone laughing and turn around to find Gator sitting on the stone wall. He swings his bare feet, bumping his heels against the rocks. His knees poke through the holes in his dungarees. He’s got on his red T-shirt and suddenly I’m reminded of the storm last week. r />
  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  Gator shrugs. “Listening to you read poems and talk to dead folks.” He gets this snide little grin on his face.

  “I am not talking to dead folks. I’m thinking out loud is all.”

  “Sure you are.”

  I pick up my book, brush the dirt and grass away, and slap it shut. “That was you last week, wasn’t it? Here in the cemetery.”

  “You should’ve seen your face,” Gator says. He laughs, thinking about this.

  I am not amused. “Are you spying on me or something?”

  “What’s there to spy on? Some white girl reading bad— real bad—poems to a dead person who can’t even get up and walk away if he wants to?” He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a rolled-up piece of brown paper sack. He smooths it open. It’s a drawing of the church with part of the cemetery and stone wall—a real good drawing. He’s got the perspective just right.

  “Not bad,” I tell him.

  “Better than that dumb poem you were reading.”

  I ignore this. “So that’s why you’ve been coming here? To draw?”

  Gator doesn’t answer me. He takes his good sweet time rolling up his picture. “You know that poem you read last week—the one about fears and dying?”

  “ ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’?”

  “Yeah, that one. It wasn’t half bad. Not good, just not as bad as the one you read today.”

  I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere between looking at Gator’s drawing and talking about poetry, I must have hopped up on the wall. Right now I am sitting only inches away from him.

  He lifts the book of medieval English verse from my hands, flips through it, and shakes his head. “You can keep this one,” he says.

  Something has been on my mind ever since he confirmed it really was him in the cemetery the week before. “How’d you get back to the groves so fast last week?” I ask.

  “Ran like the devil was on my heels,” Gator says. “That’s how.”

  It was possible, I guess. I did take my time getting into Chase’s car. Then I wandered around the groves for a while before I actually saw Gator.