Something about the word “combo” appealed to me. I got a mind-picture of Tim and me dressed up as Yardbirds, as Monkees.
“How much money?” I said.
“Twenty dollars a rehearsal,” she said, “and thirty for each performance.”
Wow, that was better than good money. Way more than I ever made cutting grass. “Thirty dollars for both of us?”
“Each, honey. We’re Baptists — what do you think? Just come to one rehearsal, see if you like it. It’s a very hip show, it’s like Godspell without all the cursing. We’re having a great time with it.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Lots of cute girls too.”
“That does it, I’m in.” I elbowed Tim. “Come on, Timmy, what do you say?”
“I’ve never been in a combo,” he said, with an evil smile.
“Great! It’s all settled. Full Flower Baptist Church, on Van Winkle Road in West Jackson. Five o’clock Sunday.”
“If we don’t like it, we can quit, right?” Tim said. “You won’t get mad and flunk us out of Algebra Two?”
She smiled. “Of course I will.”
She chattered on awhile, then took off. Oh God what have we done? On the face of it, a Christian youth rock musical sounded embarrassing, but we were counting on big laughs, especially with Passworth involved. If it wasn’t one hundred percent hilarious, we would quit.
“Let me get this straight,” Mom said. “Now you’re going off every night to some church? To do what exactly?”
“They need musicians for a combo. They’re paying twenty bucks a rehearsal!”
“Well, if it’s a church, I guess I can’t say no,” she said. “When did you learn to play piano?”
“Fooling around in the band hall,” I said. “I’m not very good, but Miz Passworth thinks I’m good enough. Come on, Mom.”
She took off her apron. “Honestly, Daniel, I wish you’d stay home more and help me with Jacko. Instead of just leaving me to do everything. No. I’m sorry. I’ll have to ask Daddy about this when he comes home.”
“Mom, please? You know he’ll say no. You know he will. Come on, this is not something you have to ask him.”
“What does Timmy’s mother say about it?”
Patsy Cousins said we were fools to get mixed up with those Jackson Baptists — they would work our fannies off and never pay us a dime. I paraphrased: “She says it’s a great idea.”
Jacko said, “What you gwine do, boy?”
“Gonna play the piano in a church.”
He cawed. “Nah, you been seeing that nigger gal, ain’t you?”
“Don’t call her that, Jacko.”
“Gone sweet on her! You tell yo mama?”
“Be quiet!”
“You got it bad,” he said. “Boy like him a taste of the dark meat! Mm-hmm!”
Mom was scandalized. “Jacko, you hush!”
“That’s right, old man, and we’re gonna get married. We’re gonna name our first baby after you!”
That sent him into a fit of laughing and coughing.
Mom regarded me gravely as she pounded his back. “You be nice to that girl. Girls are tricky. I know you don’t believe it, but I used to be one myself.”
“Mom, please.”
I RODE MY BIKE across the Yatchee bridge to find Mrs. Beecham watering the new flower beds. “Hey Musgrove, you need to start coming on time or we’ll have to get somebody else.” She made as if to squirt me. “You thirsty?”
I dodged the stream. “Lemonade, please.”
“Yeah, I’ll show you lemonade. What you got in the box?”
“Arnita’s homework. They said we should start at the top and work down.”
“Don’t you be showing her that big old box! You’ll scare her to death.”
“They want me to take her assignments on Fridays. After school lets out, the summer-school teachers will grade them for her.”
“She’s not well yet,” Mrs. Beecham said. “Don’t you be pushing too hard.”
I placed the box on the porch. “Hey, whatever you say. It was your big idea. We can skip the whole thing as far as I’m concerned.”
“Maybe y’all could just go for a walk today. Lord knows she needs to get out — I’d like to throw that TV out the window. All she does is sit there watching that trash. See can you get her to come outside.”
I knocked, eased the door open. “Arnita?”
“Arnita’s not here,” she sang from the upholstered chair. I heard the Green Acres theme. Arnita peered around the back of the chair. “Oh, hey!”
“Hey. I’m Daniel, remember?”
“I know! I’ve been waiting all day for you! Are you ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“She said you could take me for a walk.” Damn, she was cute in her dainty white T-shirt, Big Smith overalls, bare ankles, flip-flops. “Can we go, please? Come on!” She tugged me by the hand to the door. Her touch sent a thrill through me, a shot of electricity. I smelled strawberry candy.
She broke away and danced off the porch, tipping her face to the sun. The lenses of her glasses became dazzling white disks. “God, it’s so hot out here!”
Mrs. Beecham waved the hose at the zinnias. “Look how good our girl is walking!”
“Terrific,” I said. “Big improvement since the last time.” I stayed close, in case she wanted to grab my hand again. That was the first time a truly beautiful girl had ever touched me. It made the air of East Minor seem golden, heavy with light.
“Y’all have fun, now, don’t go too far,” Mrs. Beecham said.
“See you later, thanks for everything,” Arnita called, pulling me down the walk. “Come on, Daniel. Let’s go to the other side of the world.”
I suggested the little park on the riverbank, just over the bridge. The Yatchee wasn’t much of a river, but that was a pretty spot.
“I’ll go anywhere to get out of that house,” she said. “Those people are driving me crazy. They keep going on and on about my ‘injury.’ I’m sick of it.”
“That must be weird,” I said.
“See, I went in the hospital to get my nose fixed — then everything got all mixed up. Obviously for some reason they think I’m their daughter. Do you like my new nose?” She traced the center line with a finger.
“It’s great,” I said. “I mean, it’s the same as before. It’s always been a nice nose.”
“The mark of great plastic surgery is, you can’t even tell it’s been done.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do here, Arnita.”
“What do you mean? We’re taking a walk.”
“But I mean this stuff you’re saying — it’s not true. Am I supposed to tell you that, will it make you mad, or am I supposed to pretend . . . ?”
“God, you are so polite.” She tugged down her glasses. “Are you always this polite? Feel free to tell me if I say something stupid.”
“Okay, like, for instance — you did have an injury. A brain injury, not a nose job. And the Beechams are your parents, I swear.”
“No, my father’s name is Steve, and my mom is Eydie,” she said. “We live in a split-level ranch house with a big oak tree in the front yard.”
I shrugged. “See? Now that’s just something you made up. Steve and Eydie are those singers on TV.”
We stopped to peer over the side of the bridge, down into the slow-moving river. I noticed a little hoard of rocks piled in a hiding place on one of the bridge stanchions. I remembered the gang of kids that always hung out here, throwing rocks. “Arnita, you want to throw a rock?”
“Please don’t call me that. I understand why they call me that, but couldn’t you please call me Linda?”
“Sure, okay . . . Linda.”
“Arnita’s not me. And I am not she.” She dropped the rock, waited for the plonk!
I hurled one a long way upriver.
We took turns dropping and throwing rocks until we’d used up most of the boys’ stash.
We crossed the bridge and de
scended a little slope to a rusted swing set. Blue jays screamed in the trees. A tinge of leaf-smoke hung in the air.
Arnita sat in the swing. “You knew Arnita before it happened. Was she different than me?”
“Not that much. And you’re getting better, you’re already a lot better than you were. Pretty soon you’ll be good as new.”
“Well you can’t fight City Hall,” she said. “Everyone in the world can’t be crazy, so I suppose it’s got to be me.”
“It’s not your fault you got hurt.” It’s my fault was on the tip of my tongue, where it remained.
“I try to be Arnita when everyone is looking,” she said. “I don’t know where my real family is.”
“Steve and Eydie?”
“I guess they forgot all about me.” She glanced up at me. The look in her eyes just melted my heart. I placed my hands on her shoulders and nudged the swing.
“Do you remember Prom Night?” I said.
“Arnita was elected the Queen of the Prom,” she said.
“I mean after that. The accident.”
“Oh. No. I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Red Martin,” I said. “I’m not like his best friend or anything, but are you sure he’s the one that hurt you?”
“He knocked her off her bike. She fell and hit her head.”
“But it was an accident. Wasn’t it? I don’t think he meant to knock you down.”
“Yes he did,” she said. “Red is not a nice guy. He was mad cause Arnita wouldn’t kiss him at Charlene’s party.”
I edged out onto thin ice. “Okay. But I mean later, when you were riding home on your bike.”
“Red was drunk,” she said.
I gave another gentle push. “Nobody else bothered you?”
She shook her head. “Do you think she looked pretty in her prom dress?”
“You were beautiful. Unbelievable. I couldn’t stop looking at you. Nobody could. What a dress. I mean . . . That was a dress.”
She dug her toes in the sand to stop swinging. I memorized the warmth of her shoulders under my hands.
“It didn’t belong to Arnita,” she said. “Her Aunt Sarah works in this very expensive shop just off Canal Street. She was supposed to send it back. But they said she got blood on it.”
“You think we should be getting back?” I said. “Your mother will skin me alive if I keep you out here too long.” It hadn’t been long at all, really, but I was slightly afraid of this girl. The places her mind seemed to wander. The flashes of static electricity crackling from her.
“She is not my mother,” Arnita said. “I wish you could remember that.”
“Doesn’t matter, she’s back there waiting for us.”
We stopped to throw the last rock into the river — I let her do the honors. We walked up the hill to Forrest Street.
Arnita hesitated. “We can be friends, okay? You can keep track of all the really dumb things I say. That’ll be your job.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
“I don’t really want to go back to that house, Daniel. It just feels wrong to be with those people.”
“Where else could you go?”
“Is there room at your house? I could come stay with you.”
“You wouldn’t want to do that,” I said.
“Why, is it bad?”
“Not that bad, just . . . my dad’s real strict. And we have this great-uncle living with us. Things are weird at the moment.”
“Didn’t you say you have a brother?”
“Bud. He’s in the Marines. And Janie, my sister, she’s twelve. I’m the middle.”
“If he’s in the Marines couldn’t I stay in his room?” she said. “Is your house far from here?”
“Eleven miles. All the way out the Old Raymond Road. I ride my bike to town every day just to see you.”
“Maybe I could come over to your house sometime.” She touched my shoulder. Her fingers felt like a kiss. She ran to the porch.
I pedaled away with the sun in my eyes. It was silly to imagine anything with Arnita — but what a pleasant jolt when she touched me. I loved walking next to her, drinking her in. I liked how she peered over her glasses to mock me with her eyes.
I pictured Steve and Eydie in a split-level house with an oak tree out front. I imagined them standing at a window, looking out, waiting for their Linda to come home.
9
MOM’S WAGON BLEW a head gasket, so Dad had to drive me to Full Flower Baptist Church in the company Oldsmobile. He only got one day off, he said, one day a week with nothing to do but go to church and watch a little TV, and here he was spending half the afternoon driving me to the other side of the world. “What is this thing you’re doing, anyway?”
“A church musical.”
“Oh, that is sweet. Do you think you might ever get a real job? Fellow I work with has a boy same age as you, he’ll be rolling pipe in a pipe yard this summer.”
“Wow, lucky him,” I said.
“Don’t you sass me. That boy will be making real money while you’re goofing around doing your ballet dancing or whatever.”
“I play the piano, and I’m getting twenty bucks a rehearsal,” I said. “If you’d let me borrow the car, I would drive myself.”
“Not in this car. You want to drive? Save your money and buy a car.”
I considered how much more pleasant life would be if I just bought a parrot and taught it all of Dad’s lines.
“How am I supposed to get a job when we live in the middle of nowhere and you won’t let me drive?”
“You figure it out,” he said.
The truth was, Dad didn’t like me all that much. I made him uncomfortable, and vice versa. He had pretty much given up on all father-type activities, except for the Sunday-morning funnies with Janie. It was their tradition, the two of them on the sofa poring over Beetle Bailey and The Family Circus.
Dad and I had our own tradition: he assumed everything I did or said was designed to piss him off, and I did my best to oblige. Every time I opened my mouth, he was there to point out whatever was stupid, rebellious, or wrong about what I said. Sometimes I wondered what other dads said to their sons — if they weren’t yelling at each other, what on earth did they talk about? I would have to ask Tim. Although I remember him saying he and his dad didn’t talk much either.
“I give you one job to do,” Dad was saying, “one little job, in return for which you get a roof over your head and all you can eat. And you can’t show me even that little bit of respect.”
“What job?”
“The yard. In back, that place I pointed out to you yesterday. Did you finish that? No. You intentionally forgot. You laid around on your butt all weekend, and now you’re off to play with your little ballet-dancing friends.”
“All I do is cut the grass.” My voice started shaking. “Okay? That’s all I do. I come home, I cut grass. I get up before school and cut grass. I cut grass all weekend. Twelve months a year. The yard is three acres, okay? It will never stop growing. I am never gonna be through cutting it, do you understand? It is never gonna be finished.”
His hand shot out fast and smacked my face. “Don’t you smart-mouth me!” I saw white stars dancing in the air. The echo of the slap resounded in the car. “Wait’ll you have a real job,” he said. “You will pine for something as easy as pushing a lawnmower.”
“I can’t wait, Dad,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I mean it. I wish I had the money, I would pave that yard over for you right now. Today. Just asphalt it over. You’d never have to see another blade of grass as long as you live.”
“This is Van Winkle Road,” Dad said. “What did you say this place is called?”
“Full Flower Baptist Church.” It had been a few months since the last time he hit me. When we were younger he used to hit Bud and me all the time, usually for some infraction he considered serious enough. But in the past few years it always happened like this, out of nowhere, no warning. For no reason at all. Like s
omething he couldn’t control.
“Full Flower?” he was saying. “That sounds Chinese or something.”
“It’s Baptist,” I said.
Dad said, “All the real nut cases are Baptist. Your mother’s whole family, for starters. Crazy bunch of idiots and alcoholics and cripples, and every one of ’em a hard-shell Baptist.”
“There it is — Dad, slow down! Oh, you passed it.”
He heaved a sigh at the massive inconvenience of having to turn around.
For me the name Full Flower had conjured up an image of a quaint little church, but this place was huge, like a shopping mall with a steeple. You could fit two or three Minor High Schools inside the main building, and there were other sections branching off, and a big high-ceilinged part in the middle.
“Look at this,” Dad said. “Jesus H. — look at that — four, five, that’s eight Cadillacs in a row! How much are these people paying you?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Ask for more. These people are rich.”
I climbed out. “Thanks for the smack in the face, Dad. I’ll get a ride home with Tim.”
He drove off shaking his head at how I could continue to smart-mouth him with my face still burning from his hand. I’m sure he thought my persistence was ridiculous.
The heat shimmered the air above the asphalt. Tim came loping over, his guitar case bumping his knees. “Hiya, Skippy!”
“Apparently Jesus drives a Cadillac,” I said, wondering if one side of my face looked redder. Tim didn’t appear to notice.
We walked up the covered passageway into the blissful chill of the sanctuary. The dark vastness of the place stopped us in our tracks. “Whoa. . . .”
This had to be the swankiest church in Mississippi. Stained-glass windows admitted thickly colored light that gave everything a deep yellowish cast. Ranks of pews marched to a rocket-shaped pulpit, an altar table of sleek polished granite. Suspended above the altar was a silver cross, hanging swordlike in midair above a stage full of chattering teenagers.
I spotted Mrs. Passworth beside the drum set. She was delighted to see that we’d actually shown up, and immediately presented us to the Combo: Ben, the skinny bass player; Byron, on drums, with a frizzy blond Afro; Mickey, the long-haired guitarist. They showed Tim where to plug in. I sat down at the piano. They handed me a spiral-bound book of sheet music. The cover featured an elaborate handwritten script: