“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I didn’t think.”
“Yeah, well, you ought to.”
That hit me pretty hard, but I’m ashamed to say not hard enough.
I don’t know when it happened, but it got so when Jesse came over I found things to do. Homework, or some chore around the house, which was silly, because unlike Jesse, I didn’t really have any chores. In time he quit stopping by, and I would see him in the halls at school, and we’d nod at each other, but seldom speak.
The relentless picking and nagging from James and Ronnie continued, and as they became interested in girls, it increased. And Marilyn Townsend didn’t help either. She was a lovely young thing and as cruel as they were.
One day, Jesse surprised us by coming to the cafeteria with his sack lunch. He usually ate outside on one of the stoops, but he came in this day and sat at a table by himself, and when Marilyn went by he watched her, and when she came back with her tray, he stood up and smiled, politely asked if she would like to sit with him.
She laughed. I remember that laugh to this day. It was as cold as a knife blade in the back and easily as sharp. I saw Jesse’s face drain until it was white, and she went on by laughing, not even saying a word, just laughing, and pretty soon everyone in the place was laughing, and Marilyn came by me, and she looked at me, and heaven help me, I saw those eyes of hers and those lips, and whatever made all the other boys jump did the same to me . . . and I laughed.
Jesse gathered up his sack and went out.
It was at this point that James and Ronnie came up with a new approach. They decided to treat Jesse as if he were a ghost, as if he were invisible. We were expected to do the same. So as not to be mean to Jesse, but being careful not to burn my bridges with the in-crowd, I avoided him altogether. But there were times, here and there, when I would see him walking down the hall, and on the rare occasions when he spoke, students pretended not to hear him, or James would respond with some remark like, “Do you hear a duck quacking?”
When Jesse spoke to me, if no one was looking, I would nod.
This went on into the ninth grade, and it became such a habit, it was as if Jesse didn’t exist, as if he really were invisible. I almost forgot about him, though I did note in math class one day there were stripes of blood across his back, seeping through his old worn shirt. His father and the razor strop. Jesse had nowhere to turn.
One afternoon I was in the cafeteria, just about to get in line, when Jesse came in carrying his sack. It was the first time he’d been there since the incident with Marilyn some years before. I saw him come in, his head slightly down, walking as if on a mission. As he came near me, for the first time in a long time, for no reason I can explain, I said, “Hi, Jesse.”
He looked up at me surprised, and nodded, the way I did to him in the hall, and kept walking.
There was a table in the center of the cafeteria, and that was the table James and Ronnie and Marilyn had claimed, and as Jesse came closer, for the first time in a long time, they really saw him. Maybe it was because they were surprised to see him and his paper sack in a place he hadn’t been in ages. Or maybe they sensed something. Jesse pulled a small revolver from his sack and before anyone knew what was happening, he fired three times, knocking all three of them to the floor. The place went nuts, people running in all directions. Me, I froze.
Then, like a soldier, he wheeled and marched back my way. As he passed me, he turned his head, smiled, said, “Hey, Hap,” then he was out the door. I wasn’t thinking clearly, because I turned and went out in the hall behind him, and the history teacher, Mr. Waters, saw him with the gun, said something, and the gun snapped again, and Waters went down. Jesse walked all the way to the double front door, which was flung wide open at that time of day, stepped out into the light, and lifted the revolver. I heard it pop and saw his head jump and he went down. My knees went out from under me and I sat down right there in the hall, unable to move.
When they went out to tell his parents what had happened to him, that Marilyn was disfigured, Ronnie wounded, and James and Mr. Waters were dead, they discovered them in bed where Jesse had shot them in their sleep.
The razor strop lay across them like a dead snake.
Not Our Kind
When I got out of school that day, I drove over to the Dairy Queen to get a hamburger before I had to go to work at the aluminum chair plant. I had a work permit, so I got off early, and I usually grabbed a burger, and then I drove out to the plant and worked until midnight. A lot of us from high school worked there, making fifty-six dollars and fourteen cents a week, which wasn’t even good for 1968.
I was sitting at the back of the Dairy Queen, eating quickly, and was about halfway through the burger when four boys from school came in. I knew one of them pretty well, and the others a little. We all knew each other’s names, anyway. I can’t say any of them were friends of mine. We ran in different circles.
They saw me and came over. Two of them sat down in my booth, across from me, and the other two sat out to the side at a table and leaned on their elbows and looked at me. I didn’t like their attitude.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“You’re seeing it,” the one I knew best said. His name was David. Last time I saw him was at the Swinging Bridge, and there had been a fight there for money. My new friend Leonard was there. He won the fight. It was a friend of David’s he fought, and he beat the guy’s ass like a tambourine and made some money.
Actually, that fight, lit by a huge tire fire, was the first time I met Leonard, and we hit it off, and we saw each other again in Marvel Creek, running into one another accidentally at first, and then finally on purpose. He lived over in LaBorde with his uncle, but they came to the general store in Marvel Creek to shop, which I didn’t understand. Everyone in Marvel Creek goes to the larger city of LaBorde to shop, but his uncle had a store in Marvel Creek he liked, place where he had been buying shoes for a long time. He liked it, Leonard said, because the owner never told him to come around back, even before laws were passed that said he didn’t have to.
David said, “We were talking about you the other day.”
“Were you?” I said.
“Yeah. Some. We been seeing you around with that nigger.”
“Leonard?”
“One name is as good as another for a nigger. ‘Boy’ will work. We’ll call him ‘Boy.’”
“I won’t. And if I was you, I wouldn’t call him that. You might find yourself turned inside out and made into a change purse.”
“You think he’s tough, don’t you?”
“Don’t you? You seen him whip some ass at the Swinging Bridge, same as me.”
“We seen you whip some too,” another of the boys said, “but that don’t scare us none, about you or the nigger.”
The big guy’s real name was Colbert, but everyone called him Dinosaur on account of he was big and not that smart. He was a football player and he thought he was as cool as an igloo. He was said to be the toughest guy in school. That might have been true. He hadn’t been at the bridge that night. I didn’t know if he’d seen me and Leonard together or not, but he was riled about it, thanks to David.
I didn’t like where this was going. I kept eating, but I didn’t taste the rest of the burger.
“Way we see it,” David said, and bobbed his head a little so as to indicate the others, “you aren’t doing yourself any good.”
“Oh, how’s that?”
“Ought not have to spell it out for you, Hap. Hell, you know. Hanging with a nigger.”
“You mean Leonard.”
“Yeah. Okay. Leonard the nigger.”
I nodded. I didn’t realize until that moment that I really liked Leonard, and these guys I had known all my life, if only a little, I didn’t care for that much at all.
“Word’s getting around you’re a nigger-lover,” Dinosaur said.
“Is it?”
“Yeah. You don’t want that,” David said.
?
??I don’t?”
“Are you trying to be a smartass?” Dinosaur said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I put one foot out of the booth so I could move if I had to, could get a position to fight or run.
“There’s talk, and it could reflect on you,” David said.
“In what way?”
“You think girls want to date a nigger-lover? And way we hear it, this guy’s queer as a three-dollar bill, and proud of it. A nigger queer, come on, man. You got to be kidding me.”
“But he has such a nice personality,” I said.
“You aren’t going to listen, are you?” David said. “Girls don’t want to date no nigger-lover.”
“You said that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“So, you have come here to spare me being viewed in a bad way, and to make sure I don’t lose my pussy quota? That’s what’s up?”
“You’re making light of something you shouldn’t,” David said. “We got a way of doing things, and you know it.”
“We got to keep it protected,” Dinosaur said.
“We?” I said.
“White people,” David said. “Now that niggers can vote and eat with us, they think they can act like us.”
I nodded, glanced at the two that hadn’t spoken. “You guys, you thinking the same?”
They all nodded.
“Civil rights may change how the Yankees live,” David said, “but it won’t change us.”
“That’s why I don’t like you guys.”
This landed on their heads like a rock.
“You don’t have to like us, but we can’t have one of our own hanging about with niggers. He’s not our kind. He’s not one of us.”
“You know, it’s really been nice, but I have to go to work now, so I’ll see you.”
I got up and eased past Dinosaur, keeping an eye on him, but trying to look like I wasn’t concerned.
They all stood up. I was about halfway to the door when they came up behind me. David grabbed at my arm. I popped it free.
“You better take in what we’re saying,” David said.
“I could throw you through that window glass right now,” Dinosaur said.
“You might need yourself a nap and a sack lunch before you’re able to throw me through that glass, or anywhere else for that matter,” I said.
I was bluffing. I was a badass, and I knew it. But four guys, badass or not, are four guys. And one of them was a fucking freak of nature. I was reminded of how freakish he was with him standing almost as close to me as a coat of paint. He was looking down at me with a head like a bowling ball, shoulders wide enough to set a refrigerator on one side, a stove on the other.
About that time, the manager, Bob came out from behind the counter. An older guy, red-haired, slightly gone to fat, not as big as Dinosaur, but I’d seen him throw out a couple of oil workers once for throwing ketchup-soaked fries against the Dairy Queen glass to see who could make theirs stick and not slide off. They didn’t get very far in that game.
What I remember best was one of those guys, after Bob had tossed them out like they were dirty laundry, pulled a knife and held it on Bob when he came outside to make sure they were leaving.
Bob laughed, said to that guy, “Should have brought yourself a peppermint stick, you oil field trash. They’re a hell of a lot easier to eat.”
This with the tip of the knife pressed to his stomach. The guy with the knife and his buddy believed Bob. Believed him sincerely. They were out of there so fast they practically left a vapor trail. It seemed they were standing there outside the Dairy Queen one moment, and the next their car’s taillights were shining red in the distant night.
Bob said to David and the others, “All right, boys. Take it outside.”
I thought, shit. Outside isn’t going to be all that better for me.
We all started outside. Even Dinosaur didn’t want a piece of Bob.
As we were going, Bob put his hand on my shoulder.
“You stay with me.”
The others turned and looked at Bob.
“Unless I’ve developed a stutter, you know what I said.”
They hesitated about as long as it takes to blink, and went out.
Bob waited until they were outside and looking through the glass. He made a shooing movement with his hand, and they went away. After a moment I saw their car drive by the window and on out to the highway.
“They’ll be watching for you, son.”
“I know.”
“Hanging with niggers is frowned on. I got some nigger friends, but you got to know how to keep them at a distance. I go fishing with a couple of them, but I don’t have them around at my house, sitting in my chairs and eating at my table.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll remember that.”
“Still, no cause to pick on someone. You or the nigger. They don’t get to choose to be niggers. And you can get along with most anyone, and learn from most anyone, even a nigger. I learned how to catch catfish good from one.”
Well, Bob was better than the other four.
I bought a bag of chips and a Coca-Cola on ice to go, went out to my car, and drove to work. I was about halfway to the aluminum chair plant when Dinosaur, driving a Ford Mustang, pulled up behind me. The other three guys were in the car with him. They followed me to work. I parked close to the door and got out with my chips and Coca-Cola. I slurped at the Coca-Cola through a straw as I walked. I was saving the chips for dinner break. It was a light dinner, but I’d been trying to drop a few pounds. I was always prone to picking up weight, and I had to watch it.
I turned at the door into the plant and looked at them.
Dinosaur shot me the finger.
I shot him the finger back.
We had really showed each other. Funny how that can make people so mad. It’s their finger in the air, and that’s it. It has about as much actual effect as a leaf falling from a cherry tree in Japan.
They drove way, screeching tires as they left, and I went to work.
Next few days in school I’d see them in the hall, and I never once avoided them or tried to get out of the way. They were not always together, though sometimes they were, and Dinosaur bumped me a couple of times as he went by. I kept my cool. Once David said to me as he passed, “We’ll get you, niggerlover.”
This went on for awhile, and now and then they’d follow me to work, but they never did anything. I had a ball bat in my car, and they knew that, because I let them see it by holding it up once while driving, knowing they could see it from their Mustang, as they were so close on my ass. What I feared is they’d hold up a gun or guns in response, but that didn’t happen. Everyone wasn’t shooting everybody back then.
This went on through the semester, and then the spring came, and one day I went downtown to buy some blue jeans and a union shirt. The old white union shirts had become popular. Everyone was dying them, or tie-dying them, and I guess I didn’t want to be left out. What we had there in Marvel Creek was a kind of general store named Jack Woolens, and that’s where I went to buy the shirt, couple pairs of jeans, and maybe what we called desert boots, which were tan, low-cut, comfortable shoes. I thought I had enough to afford it all. I was thinking on that, figuring I could skip one pair of pants if I had to, and I’d have enough for sure that way to get the shirt, shoes, and one pair of Lee Riders.
My hair had grown longer, and I had to comb it behind my ears at school and push it up off my forehead into a pompadour so I didn’t get sent home. A bunch of us were wearing our hair longer, and there was even talk of a sit-in to protest how we were hassled by the principal, but I was the only one that showed up for the event. I ended up wandering around in the hall for a few minutes and went back to the lunchroom and had some Jell-O before going to math class. I had it washed and combed out this day, and it was bouncing loosely as I walked. I thought I was as cool as a razor edge in winter time.
I parked my junker and was walking along the sidewalk, almost
to Jack Woolens. I could see the wooden barrels setting out front—one had walking canes in it and brooms, the other had axe and hoe handles.
As I came along the sidewalk, I saw Leonard coming toward me. He saw me and smiled. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but when I saw him I knew I had missed him. He was like a stray dog that wandered in and out of my life, and I felt like when we were together that something missing was fulfilled. It was an odd combo, him being a homo and me being straight, him being black and me being white, and him being more redneck than I was. He didn’t like my long hair and had told me, and I didn’t like that he thought we needed a conservative president. He was a stray dog I liked, and I decided right then and there I wanted to keep him, even if he might bite. He probably thought I was the stray dog. I doubt he worried about my bite, however. He came down the sidewalk with one hand in his pants pocket, the other swinging by his side.
That’s when David and Dinosaur, and the other two thugs, got out of the Mustang parked across the street, having spotted me and caught me without my ball bat. They came across the street, almost skipping.
They got to me before Leonard.
They came up on the curb and managed their way around me in a half circle. The door to Jack Woolens was at my back. It was open. It was a cool day and air-conditioning wasn’t as common then, so it was left that way to let in the breeze as well as too many flies.
“Gotcha now,” David said.
“Gotcha what?” Leonard said, as he came up the sidewalk, both hands swinging by his sides now.
“You’re the other one we want to see,” said Dinosaur. “You and the girl, here.”
“Wow,” I said. “That bites. You see, Leonard, they’re calling me a girl because my hair is long.”
“It is too long,” Leonard said.
“They are really pushing the wit, calling me a girl, noticing I have long hair. These guys, they ought to be on Johnny Carson.”
“Fuck you,” Dinosaur said.
“You’re looking for us, well, you done found us,” Leonard said.
“That’s right,” I said. “You have.”