I said, “How was jail?”
“Deeeelightful,” he said in a nasal honk.
“Don’t do Eddie to me,” I said.
“Oh man, was that Eddie? Sorry.”
I blew out a sigh. “I can get out of this car, as you know.”
“Where have you been, Skip? I drove by that hellhole motel fifty zillion times. Y’all’s car is never there.”
I explained that we’d moved to a slightly less hellish place. I didn’t say where. I knew Tim would make horrible fun of the drive-in, and I wasn’t ready to hear it.
We turned onto the Old Vicksburg Road, heading west with no destination. Tim described how he’d had to invent some details of his confession to Detective Magill. “They found part of a Clorox bottle. What did you use bleach for? I said to wipe off fingerprints.”
“I poured it out,” I said. “I just needed the bottle to put the gas in.”
“Ah.” A sly smile to acknowledge my admission.
“You should have seen it blow,” I said. “It was incredible.”
“Oh come on, Skippy, tell me everything.”
“Tim. This is bad trouble you’re in. We’ve gotta straighten this out.”
“I said forget it, okay? You would do the same thing for me, right?”
Yes, I said. Maybe my biggest lie yet.
Tim wasn’t faking. He wasn’t even angry. He seemed as cheerful, in fact, as I’d seen him in months. A new lightness about him, a carefree tone in his voice. He had replaced the Carpenters sticker on the dashboard with a cutout of Suzi Quatro in a leather corset, but all he wanted to listen to was this mournful album Blue.
I told him all the details, the reconnaissance, planning, and execution. I told him about the lengths I went to, to give him an alibi. He listened intently and shrugged it off.
One night in jail seemed to have loosened him up, relaxed him. As if he was finally free of some long-standing worry.
I would never forgive him for Arnita. But what did he really do that was wrong? He just told her the truth — as I should have done, long ago. Getting rid of her that way was mean, but it was also the right thing. He offered me the chance to tell her myself, and I didn’t have the courage. Tim was right, Arnita deserved better than a lie.
We zipped over the tops of round hills, a deep goldy end-of-summer green. Tim thought it was hilarious that the band would be playing “Hail to the Chief” for Nixon later in September. He pointed out that he had already done more time in jail than Nixon.
I told him how Arnita’s little speech on the subject of her whiteness had sent the assembly into an uproar.
“She always did like an uproar,” he said.
And guess who was waiting for her at the stage door?
“Oh no. Oh man, you’re kidding. Oh, poor Skippy — Christ, what a kick in the balls! Listen, don’t you worry about it. It’s all gonna work out. I just know it is.”
“How can it work out? Don’t be stupid. She hates me.”
“And now she thinks she’s white? Isn’t that what you said?”
“Ever since the accident.”
“She always did act kind of white,” Tim said. “That’s how she got so popular. I bet she has more white friends than black ones.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. She’s not the same person at all. She’s this other girl named Linda. At least some of the time. She’s better now.”
“Durwood, you need to stay far, far away from this girl, okay? Trust me on this. She is extremely crazy.”
“Not crazy. Brain-damaged. We were there, remember?”
Usually when I brought up Prom Night, Tim glared as if he’d like to slug me. Now he just sadly shook his head. “And you’re as stuck on her as ever.”
“I guess so.”
“Jail wasn’t as bad as you’d think,” he said. “You sit in a little room with bars on the door, what’s wrong with that? They bring you books to read, beanie-weenies and potato salad for supper. Better than my mother would’ve fixed.”
He acted cavalier about it, not like someone who had learned any lesson at all.
The hills began to roll higher and deeper, the two-lane swooping down a long descent from the forest into a gathering of gas stations and small motels. A sign pointed the way to Vicksburg National Military Park.
Tim said, You wanna?
I said, Why not. At the visitor center we bought Cokes and paused to admire the diorama of the rat-eating citizens of Vicksburg.
Driving through a columned arch, we crossed onto federal property — you could tell by the smooth new asphalt and the groomed swales of grass flanking the road. Poor Mississippi couldn’t afford such swanky roads.
The hills of the battlefield were studded with monuments to the dead. Around every bend was a grand vista leading to another magnificent obelisk. The monuments of the victorious Yankees were larger and more elaborate than the Southern ones. Illinois had gotten entirely carried away with a full-scale Pantheon in white marble at the head of about five hundred steps.
Every little while along the park drive was a turnout, a clearing with a line of cannon and a historical marker to explain which part of the battle was fought here. We passed row after row of white headstones in the national cemetery, all the dead from the battle and many more besides. Now we could taste the muddy air off the river. The road curved steeply up and around to the highest ground for miles, Fort Hill.
We parked, and walked to the crest of the ridge. Cannon glared out over the wide brown glittering river. This hill commanded the bend in the river for miles. The view stretched on forever to the west.
I pushed the red button set into the annotated map. “With these cannon,” a scratchy deep voice intoned, “the Army of Vicksburg under General Pemberton controlled navigation on the mighty Mississippi, and earned this sleepy riverside village the title Fortress of the Confederacy. . . .”
Tim boosted himself up onto the speaker slots, muffling the voice with his butt. “Mm-hm,” he said, wiggling. “Keep talking!”
I sighted down the tapering barrel of the cannon to a tiny barge, way down there on the wide muddy river. “Give me powder and a ball, sir,” I cried, “and I’ll blow that thar Yankee to hay-dees!”
Tim grinned. “I’ll give you a ball! You’re really into this stuff, huh Durwood. How you know so much about it?”
Earlier he’d made fun of me for trying to explain Grant’s flanking movements downriver. “There’s these things called books. If you look inside ’em you’ll find all these words?”
“But you act like you really care about all this! Aren’t you happy the South got the shit kicked out of it?” He raised his invisible rifle and squeezed off a shot. “I’m not sure it really matters. Like the Indians. I know the white man slaughtered ’em all. I know I ought to care. I just don’t.”
I started telling him how my great-grandpa Otis P. Musgrove walked home from Chickamauga on his shot leg, but he didn’t care about that either.
“Would you die for the right to own a slave, Durwood?”
“Heck no. I’m a Yankee. You know that.”
“No you’re not. If your grandpa’s a Reb, you’re one of us. You were born in Alabama, dammit. Try to act like it. Would you die for Alabama?”
“No way,” I said. “It’s just a place. I’m not gonna die for a place. Anyway, what would I want with a slave?”
“Well, I think we have learned that would be your type.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Touché, dickhead.” I took a swipe at him.
He used his imaginary machine gun to mow down dozens of Yankees charging up the face of Fort Hill. “What would you die for, Skip?”
I’d never thought about it, and I told him so.
“Well, think about it,” he said.
“I don’t want to. I kinda like the idea of not dying. At least not for a while.”
“I’m serious. Is there anything on earth you’d be willing to give up your life for?”
I considere
d all the immediate possibilities.
“The country?” I ventured. “I mean, if we got attacked. Like Pearl Harbor. And if we all had to fight, I would go. Not with Nixon in charge, though. And not to Vietnam, thank you very much. That looks like no fun at all.” I thought of Bud with his lucky bad foot, which had kept him at the base in California so far. His last postcard said he was learning to surf.
“Anything else? What if someone came in and tried to murder your family, like In Cold Blood. Would you die to stop ’em?”
“They’re gonna murder the whole family, or just some of them? Do I get to choose which ones?”
He boosted himself up to straddle the cannon. “What if it was me? What if somebody was trying to kill me, and you might get killed trying to stop ’em? Would you do it?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You would?”
“Sure. You’d do the same for me, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “All right. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Why?”
“No reason.” He had a goofy smile, unaccountably happy. “I knew that’s what you would say.” He peered down at the black cast iron barrel emerging from between his legs. “Here’s what you need, Durwood. Here’s what that girl really wanted. Look here.” He patted it, stroked it.
“Not funny,” I said.
Tim hopped off the cannon. He pushed the red button. “With these cannon, the Army of Vicksburg under General Pemberton controlled navigation on the mighty Mississippi . . .”
The Vicksburg Dairy Dog was just like the one back home. We ordered burgers, onion rings, coffee. Evening was falling, but inside the Dog was bright as noon. Dad would kill me for going AWOL from the Twi-Lite. Too bad. I would just have to get killed. Janie and I had spent the whole weekend helping him clean up his damn drive-in, and now I had declared an afternoon off for myself.
Janie! Oh God. I’d promised her a ride home after school, then forgot her completely. I wondered how long she stood there waiting for me, after I’d ordered her not to keep me waiting.
Ah well. She’s my sister, she’ll just have to get over it.
We got back in the Pinto. “Where to?” I said.
“Anywhere you want.” Tim turned to look at me. “You got any ideas?”
“Not really. I guess home. School tomorrow.”
“I’m not going tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll go Friday, I think. I’m pretty sure I won’t go before Friday.”
I said, “Want to take the interstate back? It’s faster.”
“Yeah, we could,” he said. “Or else, I don’t know. What do you feel like?”
That was an innocent question. I don’t know why my skin prickled up in gooseflesh. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by it.
Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the car. I rolled down my window and groped for the dashboard and switched on the radio — a crash of loud static. I twisted the dial and landed on a station playing Jackie Wilson, “Say You Will.”
I turned it up loud. We rode without talking. If you drive eighty on the interstate, you can get back to Minor in no time.
Finally I said, “I’m having a hard time getting over what you did,” I said. “She’s pretty special to me.”
“I know, Skippy,” he said. “And I appreciate you giving me another chance. I’ll take you on home, if you want. Where is home these days, anyway?”
“You can drop me at the Jitney Jungle. I’m supposed to buy food for the house. Mom went to Alabama to see her family for a few days.”
“I’ll take you to the store and then home. I don’t mind.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“What’s the big secret, Mumwood? How come you don’t want me to know where you live?”
“It’s kind of a dump. I don’t think we’ll be staying there long. Did you say you’re not coming to school tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure I’m even coming back to school,” Tim said.
I stared at him. “What?”
“I’m just not sure.” His face looked paler than before.
I switched off the radio. “What are you talking about?”
He put on a tight little smile. “You didn’t look in your packet, huh?”
“Packet?”
“Registration.”
“What about it? It’s right here.”
“You found it in your locker, right? Just like every year on the first day of school.”
“Yeah.”
“But didn’t you find a little something extra? In your locker, on top of your packet? A couple of extra pages, stapled together?”
“I thought some of it fell out. I didn’t look at it yet. What are you talking about?”
“It’s a gift from Red,” he said. “His latest project. Apparently he’s been busy over at the Xerox place making up a bunch of them. He must have got to school real early this morning. He managed to put a copy in every single locker.”
“Tim —” I pulled out two pages, stapled together. He turned on the dome light.
Police Incident Report, Sheriff’s Department, Hinds County.
The date at the top was November 23, 1972.
Arrestee: Cousins, Timothy R. Case number 000385-22F-1972.
Offense: Indecent exposure.
Offense: Unnatural intercourse.
Offense: Open and gross lewdness in a public place.
Offense: Sodomy, second degree.
“What is this?” I said.
“It’s fairly self-explanatory.” Tim kept his eyes on the road. “Or at least Red seemed to think so.”
Location of offense: Rest Area #183N, I-55 South.
Suddenly I grasped what Tim was trying to tell me. All over Minor, students were finding copies of this report with their permission slips, sign-up sheets, the fall football schedule.
Tim told me he’d been arrested once before, at Thanksgiving. Reckless driving, he said. Spent a night in jail. They’d suspended his license.
No mention of driving anywhere on this page.
REPORTING OFFICER’S NARRATIVE (Brief narrative of the facts surrounding the offense and the arrest)
At 9:20 PM, Reporting Officer (R/O) was conducting undercover vice operations when he observed arrestee loitering near the restroom building. R/O was approached by arrestee, who made overt sexual advances. R/O declined, returned at 9:45 PM to find arrestee loitering with another subject, engaged in public lewdness and indecent exposure, specifically masturbating in view of the officer. Arrestee again made overt sexual advances. R/O placed subject under arrest and escorted arrestee to vehicle. Arrestee was handcuffed, informed of his rights, and transported to HCSD. Transportation proceeded without incident. At 10:52 PM, R/O turned the arrestee over to HCSD personnel for processing. At all times while in custody, arrestee appeared coherent. Although uncommunicative, arrestee was cooperative.
DEFENDANT’S VERSION/REMARKS (What did the defendant say about the offense or his/her whereabouts at the time of offense?)
Arrestee asked why he was being arrested and then said, “Oh wow. I can’t believe this s**t.” Otherwise, arrestee remained silent during transportation to the station and during processing. Arrestee declined to answer any questions until an attorney was present. However, arrestee cooperated physically and did not resist in any way.
“The whole school is reading this?”
“My mother got a visit from Marjorie Schlatter’s mom. Marjorie opened her packet and voilà. Her mom ran right over to show us. Wasn’t that nice of her?”
“Jesus. Tim.”
“Yup. It’s Red’s copy — see down at the bottom where he had to sign for it? D. Ronald Martin. Ol’ Dudley. His lawyer must have got it for him. He could’ve covered up his name before he Xeroxed it. But he wanted everybody to know he put this out.”
“Payback,” I said. “For burning his car.”
“There you go.”
“Oh God. Tim. I’m sorry.” I shook the pages. “This is true?”
“Well, not exa
ctly. There’s a little more to it than that.” His skin looked translucent in the dashboard light.
“But they found you guilty of this?”
“Nah, they dropped the charges. I was a juvy. Slap on the wrist. My folks never even found out.”
“How could they not find out?”
“I told you — I used you as my excuse. My one phone call was to tell ’em I was spending the night at your house. I was so lucky you didn’t call me that night. They let me out the next morning. Remember when I was supposed to be taking those advanced placement classes out at West Hinds? I never went. I used the money to pay a lawyer. He handled the whole thing. The folks never knew. Until today when Marjorie’s mother came over. Mom thinks that was the only copy and somehow it got in Marjorie’s packet by mistake. She doesn’t know about Red and his Xerox machine.”
“What did she say?”
“She doesn’t believe it. She says it’s a case of mistaken identity. Dad wants me out of the house.”
“Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry, Tim. This is too much.”
“Yeah it is. Finally, too much.” That grim smile returned. “I guess all’s fair in love and war, isn’t that what they say?”
I turned away. I didn’t want to know more. What could it mean? Sodomy? Indecent? Lewd? Gross? Unnatural? It sounded like that song on the sound track of Hair.
This happened a couple months after we met. Imagine — Tim had gone through this whole indecent unnatural thing, busted for these crimes, and never breathed a word to me. His best friend. Imagine holding that inside, all this time.
This was where all the trouble began. The words on these pages were the awful thing he didn’t want me or anyone to know.
That feeling I had gotten from him a few minutes ago? — that was a definite feeling. Oh God. Did that make me one too? Because I’m his friend? Because I could sense that he — that he was asking —
My hand wandered to the back of my head. Each of my fingertips found its way to one of the spots where my hair would not grow.
These words were the reason Tim drove away from Arnita on Prom Night, instead of stopping to help her. The thing that was gnawing at him all along. And now everyone in the world would be reading them.