The vendor said, “People can’t hear the headlines what with you shouting out.”
The evangelist answered, “This is my corner.”
Trouble, Edmund thought. He got ready to move quick, if he needed to. Don’t ever be caught in a cross fire, his mama had taught him.
“Your corner?” the newsman asked. “Your corner is across the street.”
But the evangelist stood his ground. “God changed it to over here. This morning. He said there was more business over here at the White Palace Grill.”
“He’s right,” the vendor said. “That’s why it’s my corner.”
They were both crazy. Edmund stood up slowly, not to attract their attention.
The evangelist slapped his sandwich board with his hand. “You eat meat?”
“Of course I eat meat. I eat right here at the White Palace Grill.”
“That’s not what they serve,” the evangelist said.
“You gonna get yourself sued.”
“I don’t care. What they got is ground-up cardboard soaked in goat’s blood.”
The vendor took off his cap and smoothed his head again. “They have a place for people like you.”
“In the Palace?”
“No. In the loony bin. Tuscaloosa.”
“It’s my work,” the evangelist said. He sounded whiny. “You try to make a living peddling words.”
“I do.” The vendor held up a copy of the Birmingham News.
“Let’s swap around. You stand over there across the street where I used to be, and I’ll stay here. Gimme the papers. You can wear my sign.” He began to struggle to pull the sandwich board up over his head.
“You gotta be crazy,” the vendor said.
The evangelist got the boards off. He rolled his chest around as though it were good not to be confined, but his face contracted with meanness. Edmund could see it. The man was losing his mind in a new way.
“You’re tired of your life, ain’t you?” the evangelist said to the vendor.
He Klan, Edmund thought. Not no preacher. He Klan. Watch out!
The evangelist went on, “I can see it writ on your face.”
The vendor wouldn’t back down, but he spoke slowly and carefully, as though he’d considered the matter. “No, I’m not tired of my life.” He took off his paper painter’s cap, smoothed his hair, and put it back on. “I don’t believe anybody’s tired of their life. Unless you are.”
“See,” the evangelist said, and now his voice was all pleading, not a bit cruel. Suddenly Edmund knew what he was seeing—multiple personalities. He’d heard a sermon about it—how we have different people inside us, fighting one another. That was what was wrong with the evangelist. “See,” the evangelist said, “I’m dying for a hamburger, but I can’t go in, see. God’s watching me. But if I took your place, then God would think it was you going in.”
“God knows the difference between you and me.” The vendor seemed shocked.
“He’s taking a nap.”
“What?” The newspaper vendor couldn’t believe his ears, Edmund could tell. Neither could he.
“He’s just dozed off,” the evangelist explained. “God don’t see good with his eyes closed.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s the only way to account for the holy carnage that’s about to happen here,” the big evangelist said, and suddenly he spoke in the tongue of an educated man. “God’s asleep. That’s the only way it could happen. Undercover F.B.I., brother.” He flashed his badge. “Give me your papers, and you get your ass across the street. You, too, sonny,” he said to Edmund. “Take this goddamned sign.”
Saturday Morning: Lee
WHEN LEE WOKE UP SATURDAY MORNING, THE FIRST thing she did was to touch her poor mutilated shoulder. It hurt so bad she sleepily swung her legs over the side of the bed and shuffled her way to the good light in the bathroom to inspect her injury. When she saw in the mirror her whole shoulder was swollen and red, she woke up. Around each of the four curved lines, the flesh seemed infected. Then she glanced at her face. Her cheeks and forehead, even her neck, were red with fury. Her sleeveless nightgown was pink, but the flush on her face wasn’t reflection. In wonder she stared at her face and saw she was still turning; she’d never seen herself so close to beet red. Then she realized her bottom was throbbing. It was shame that had really awakened her. Not the shoulder.
She hurt so badly she was afraid to go to the toilet.
She stalked back into the bedroom.
Yes, he was in bed. He had his elbow crooked back behind his head, and he was using it for a pillow. The real pillow was pushed aside. When he came in the night before, he had not wakened her. Though it was painful to walk, she hobbled over to the bed. No need to bend over to sniff him. Over his body hung the rank aroma of klavern beer, and Ryder had a smug little upturn to his lips.
Before she knew it, she had the broom in her hand. She had been to the kitchen and back. She wanted to bash him. She wanted to smack his nose into his head. While she tightened her grip on the broom handle, she realized she didn’t have the right weapon. The straw end was too soft, and the handle end was too light. Quickly she used the broom to sweep away the cloud of beer vapors hovering over him. She felt witch-crazy—sweeping the air over him. If she bashed his upturned face with all her might, before she could come close to getting even, he’d just wake up. Leaning the broom against the wall, she glided noiselessly into the children’s room.
Though she was aware of their three little shapes under the summer sheets, she didn’t even glance at the children. She knew Bobby and Tommy were curled into the double bed; Shirley had her own little single bed. Her three little bears. Their beds almost filled the bedroom. Solemn as a judge, Bobby’s baseball bat stood in the corner. His fielder’s glove had slid halfway down the shaft. Lee bent over and started working the glove up the bat when Bobby said, “Mom?”
His voice was so pleased and fresh, she felt washed with guilt. She could feel all the blood draining out of her head while she stood up.
“Did I wake you up, son?”
“No, ma’am. I was already awake,” he said softly, respectful of his sleeping brother and sister. “Just lying here thinking.” He sat up.
He was wearing a Superman T-shirt to sleep in, and he was so adorable, she wanted to gather him in her arms and kiss him all over. She knew he was too old for that, and she blushed even to have thought of it.
“Mom,” he said, concerned, “what happened to your shoulder.”
She wanted terribly to tell him. She looked at him again, his brown hair down on his forehead. Really, she liked his hair better that way than when it was all combed with water for church. The dangling shock of hair made him look more like a little boy. No matter how much she wanted to complain about Ryder, she knew Bobby was too little to tell him about his father. Maybe when he was sixteen.
“Well,” she answered slowly, “I don’t know. Must of been mosquito bites I scratched in my sleep.” But Bobby wasn’t looking at her shoulder now;he was looking at her breasts, through the rayon nightgown. While she knew it was just childish curiosity, for just a second Bobby had looked like Ryder. “I got to go to the bathroom,” she said.
By the time she stepped back up to the sink, she was wondering if she would go through with it—if she would ever get even with Ryder, and more. Though she dreaded it, she knew she had to sit on the toilet.
It hurt so bad to go, the tears came to her eyes and overflowed. She wished Ryder could be locked up in jail for what he’d done to her. Well, at least she’d found the Miles College phone number in the telephone book—something he was too uneducated to do—and called in the warning. Even if the bomb had gone off, it would only have killed a few. Lee didn’t want to kill those people, any of them. They hadn’t done anything to her. She remembered her satisfaction when even the crippled girl had rolled out the door onto the porch and someone had turned her around and bumped the big wheels of her chair down the step.
Last September, Lee had felt the blast come up through the floor, just after the congregation had risen to sing. Again, nearly a year later, Lee shuddered with the vibrations of it. Her body had known something awful was happening. Right at that moment, something had happened that she’d always remember.
When she’d seen their photographs in the paper, she had thought, They’re nothing but innocent children, and she knew the people who wanted to blow them up were crazy; they weren’t just bad;they were so crazy with hate it was hard to imagine. And Ryder had almost made her blow up innocent people. It could have been somebody like Ryder or Dynamite Bob who did the first job. But not somebody like herself. After all, she hadn’t done it. She hadn’t killed anybody at Miles College, but if she had, it would have been Ryder’s fault all the same.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, she gulped for breath. She knew when vampires looked in the mirror, they didn’t see themselves. All the time she was thinking, she was staring at herself without seeing anything, but she wasn’t a vampire. She hated blood. She was breathing hard. If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody? As long as they didn’t attack you. But they said the real nonviolent ones wouldn’t fight back, no matter what you did to them. She could imagine herself, like the blond girl last night, standing around with them like they were just people. Like when you waited for the bus. Almost, Lee wished she could come to a college like that. It was outside agitators who stirred them up anyway. Coloreds weren’t to blame any more than she would be to blame for things Ryder talked her into doing.
She focused in the mirror on her shoulder, on the four nail marks like crescent moons. It was Ryder she wanted to kill. And she knew how to do it. He’d taught her.
Quickly, she leaned over and flushed the toilet. Even though it wasn’t her period, she’d have to wear a pad. But suppose she really did it? Killed him. She could make it look like an accident. Send the kids over to her mother’s. His brother LeRoy was on the force;he’d want it covered up. LeRoy belonged to the same klavern as Ryder, but LeRoy wouldn’t want his brother associated with bomb making. Not only smarter, LeRoy was a better man than Ryder. LeRoy was proud of himself and his police uniform.
Now why was that?
LeRoy was younger, and he’d grown up after their father had deserted the family. LeRoy had grown up better because he didn’t have any bad example hanging around. And Bobby and Tommy would grow up better if Ryder wasn’t there.
There was a gentle knocking on the door. “Mom, can I get in the bathroom now, please.”
Bobby was a polite, good child. She asked him to tiptoe into the bedroom and please bring her robe and hand it to her through a crack in the door.
Without any protest, he did as he was told.
“Here, Mom,” he said from the other side of the door. She reached her hand through, put on the robe, checked the toilet to be sure there was nothing shocking in it, and came out. Sweeping his hair aside, she couldn’t resist planting a kiss on his forehead. “I’m going to send y’all over to Big Mama’s,” she said, “so your daddy can sleep late.”
Didn’t she sound like a good wife? Well, she was. But she was an even better mother.
“Want me to get them up?”
“Yes.” She went to the phone and explained quietly to her mother: “Ryder wants the kids out of the house. He’s making something. I don’t know what. He said he wants to concentrate.”
Concentrate—that was a word her mother used to use when Lee was a schoolgirl. “Never mind the radio or what all,” her mother would say. “Just concentrate on your lessons.”
Lee went to the cardboard canister of Quaker Oats; deep down in the oats was where they kept the directions for making a bomb. The folded paper was always coated with oatmeal dust when she drew it out. Well, she’d get dressed because once she made the bomb and started the clock, she’d need to get out herself. She’d just check to be sure he was sleeping soundly.
Once the kids were out of the house, she’d start on the wiring. She could use the dynamite sticks from last night, but she’d start all over with the mechanism. After he hurt her, Ryder had left her lying on her stomach, facedown, while he retrieved the dud bomb. She wasn’t going to try the drip method again. She’d go over to the clock method. Not even on grass last night, but her face on the dark dirt, she had cried till her cheek was lying in a little mud puddle. If Ryder woke up while she was working on it at the kitchen table, she’d just smile sweet as pie and tell him she was practicing. If he didn’t wake up, she’d put the bomb on the night table right beside his head. Whether he woke up or not would be a sign, whether to kill him or not.
She pictured the cloth on the bedside table. It had a ten-inch drop of crocheted lace that her mother’s mother had made. She didn’t want to blow that up. When Ryder saw the black mud on one side of her face, he had laughed and said, “Well, I guess you’re half nigger.” Before she set the bomb on the table, she’d take up the cloth.
She thought of the expression “Saturday night special” for the cheap guns that the coloreds bought. Well, this would be more special, and she couldn’t wait till night. She needed to do it at least by early Saturday afternoon, before Big Mama would be sending the kids back to the house.
Saturday: Agnes
TRAFFIC ON TWENTIETH STREET HAD PICKED UP RIGHT smart, Agnes noticed, with a lot of police cars circling the Tutwiler Hotel. Where Twentieth Street T’ed into Woodrow Wilson Park, one of the police was standing close to the bronze statue of a World War II soldier throwing a hand grenade. Though it was a green statue, of course it depicted a white man, and that was another white man inside the bright blue uniform standing beside the metal statue.
What is love? She mouthed the question without making a sound, as her eye fell on a little shoeshine boy industriously snapping his rag while he polished a white man’s foot. With complete confidence she answered, God is Love.
And it was right to tithe; it meant I love. She hadn’t deprived TJ or herself of anything significant. Her haint was kind of like Satan. TJ had given her her pill when she’d come in last night. He had told her it was stress making her mind act up—his getting beat up so bad. She hadn’t added to TJ’s load of worry by mentioning the bomb scare. Now her mind was almost clear. Get thee behind me, Satan, she mouthed, soundlessly.
Then an exclamation burst into the air—“Oh, no!”—for across Twentieth over at the White Palace Grill, she saw Christine and pretty Arcola wearing her braid. Agnes wasn’t the only one looking. Just at that moment, a policeman with a shepherd on a short leash stepped out of the Tutwiler Drugstore. The Lord is my shepherd.
The police turned his head from side to side, looking all up and down Twentieth Street. He waved down the street to Woodrow Wilson Park where his blue buddy stood near the green hand grenade soldier, up on his pedestal. When TJ was a young man back from World War II, he had marched down this same street in a parade. Wasn’t no statue to TJ.
Finished with his job, the shoeshine boy stood up and took his pay. The white man dropped the coins in the boy’s palm, then he reached out and touched the little boy’s nappy head! Agnes felt alarmed at so unusual a gesture; then she calmed herself and thought, I guess that’s progress. Then she prayed with all her heart that that little boy would never have to go off to war.
She hurried up to the traffic light so she could cross over to speak to Christine and Arcola.
Them so glad to see her, Agnes hated that she must mention the cruising of the police cars, the flocking of the bluebirds, and the dog.
“Dogs!” Christine said, looking down the street.
The warning conveyed, Agnes let herself admire Christine, wiry and straight, in her navy blue polyester church suit. Arcola had on a neat pair of khaki slacks and a red-plaid blouse with short sleeves. Neat as a pin, like she’d stepped out of a Sears catalog.
“Just one,” Agnes answered, but as she spoke, two more dogs and their uniformed handlers stepped out of the h
otel lobby.
“Lady, I guess we better teach you to count,” Christine said, trying to make a joke.
Arcola gripped Christine’s arm. “If there’s anything I’m scared of,” Arcola said, “it’s big dogs.”
“They on leashes,” Christine answered.
“Yes, they are,” Agnes reassured. But the dogs were always kept on leashes till the moment of attack. “You know they can unsnap a leash so fast you can’t hardly see what happened.”
“Why shouldn’t any black person, Arcola or me, sit at White Palace and order a hamburger?” Christine put her hands on her hips. “Don’t talk scare talk, Mrs. LaFayt,” she scolded. “The old laws being struck down every day.”
“What you-all down here for?” Agnes scolded back. “You want to die with a half-eaten hamburger in your mouth?” She hadn’t expected herself to talk back to Christine. The words were just in her mouth, and she let them pop out.
“I don’t have dying in mind. I’m talking protest. Demonstration.”
“Sit-in,” Arcola added and flashed her sunshine smile. “Progress.”
Agnes sighed. Wasn’t any use to try to scold your teachers, she could tell that right off. Her impertinent words ringing in her mind, she could feel a headache trying to begin. She’d have to put a soothing tone on top of that. She spoke slowly, quietly, like the voice of history. “Back in the old days, you would hear ‘So-and-so got a cross blazing in his yard.’ And ‘So-and-so she got rocks throwed at her walking from the bus stop.’ And ‘So-and-so, he dead.’ ”
Agnes remembered standing on her porch out in the country. Maggie was her neighbor then, too, and, long ago, Maggie had whispered words that still echoed in Agnes’s mind. Well, she’d try to use the words for good, for warning these young women who had come up in a better time.