Come a Stranger (20 page)

“I always like stories,” she said, waiting to hear whatever it was.

“I ran hurdles on the track team, and there was this white guy—Tillerman. Samuel Tillerman—he was on the track team too. I knew the kind he was, and I wasn't about to give him an inch. I hated him. Bullet, he called himself. He drove me—I never knew I could work so hard. The thing is, he taught me more about myself than anybody else, and in his own way, he won me the scholarship I needed, for college. And I never loved anybody the way I loved him.”

It didn't make any sense, and it made perfect sense. But what was the story? “What happened to him?” Mina asked. “Where is he now?”

“Dead. Killed. In Vietnam,” Tamer Shipp said. His adam's apple moved up and down. “When I heard that—I've never—it was like teeth in my heart.”

Mina was shocked: She knew that exact feeling, and those exact words for it.

Mr. Shipp looked over at her. “I guess that's a little too fanciful
for you to stomach.” Mina shook her head, unable to find words to say anything. “Or because he was white, and prejudiced—because he was. Well, it shocked me too, Mina, to feel that way.”

Mina nodded her head, because she knew the feeling, however different the cause was. She waited for him to tell what happened.

“Even now, it's years ago, whenever I think of it, think of him—those teeth bite in. That grief—it doesn't ease up. I don't know why, and I don't even know if I want it to. But whenever—”

“I'm sorry,” Mina finally said. That wasn't anything to say, but there was nothing else she could say. She meant it, for what that was worth—those teeth had left her heart alone for a long time now. He called it a story, but he didn't tell it like a story. He told it like—like for once, this was something he couldn't set his mind to and make orderly sense out of. Mina had listened to his mind, Sundays in church, and she knew how strong and true it was. But this, this Bullet thing—she couldn't call it a story—this he couldn't even tell in an orderly way. This lay at his heart; she could hear that in his voice and in the ways he couldn't talk about it, and it hurt him. And there was nothing she could do or say to ease him. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

“I am too, sometimes. Life would have been easier if I'd never met him,” Mr. Shipp said. “You want to hear a piece of naked vanity? I always wished I'd been able to save him. Not save his soul.” He turned to smile at Mina and she thought if ever she came to meet Jesus, she'd have already seen His eyes. “Only save his life. His soul was—just fine.”

“It's Bullet you named Samuel after, isn't it?” Mina said.

“You have a phenomenal way of seeing into the corners of a story, Mina.”

“I guess so,” she said. She didn't tell him that she always
studied every word he spoke, each gesture, anything he did, or . . . until she could etch him into her memory without her even trying.

Mr. Shipp's eyes were on his children, splashing cool in the creek.

“Who was he? What was he like?” Mina thought if she had a picture of him in her mind she could understand more.

“I never knew anything about him, really. We weren't what anybody would call friends. His family had a farm around here, I think. They hated blacks, I guess. But he wasn't the kind of man you think of as having any family at all,” Mr. Shipp said. “Hard. He was hard. I think God might be hard like that. Because there wasn't a false bone in his body. Then he got killed off, in that useless, senseless war before . . . You should have seen him run, Mina, he was—it wasn't that he was good, although he was good, really good. He was just so—right. To watch him move . . . it was so right. I admired that boy, and he got to respect me, I'm pretty sure of it. But—”

“You said he was someone you knew,” Mina remembered.

“I knew him,” Mr. Shipp said. “I never met anyone like him, and I wish he'd have lived, so I could have known him.”

He turned his head back to look at Mina again. She wasn't crying, although she felt like it, like weeping—for this dead young man and for whatever grief Mr. Shipp was carrying around. But if she started in crying that would get in the way of her listening.

“Do you love God, Mina?” he asked her.

Mina didn't know what to say. He was asking her about why God let things happen like Bullet Tillerman being killed; he was reminding her that God wasn't easy, it was God who made blacks and whites; and he was telling her that this was a question he was asking himself. He was wondering all these things because of Bullet. Mina didn't know what she could say to ease Mr. Shipp so
she told the truth. “I think I don't know much about love,” she said. And she didn't, although she also did.

Tamer Shipp was looking at her and looking at her. The children laughed and splashed before them, and the air was muggy all around them, filled with bug noises; but in all the world, all Mina heard was what he said to her without saying a word.

He knew she loved him, and he wished she didn't because that was hard on her, but he was glad she did too. Mina was glad herself to read that gladness as part of his glance, but she pulled her eyes away. It was bad enough that Mr. Shipp had Bullet in his heart, to pain him, and she could see now—see what it would be to meet something that might be the best and have it just wiped out, erased, taken away so you couldn't ever know it. Ended and finished as if it had no value. With nothing left behind.

Mina wasn't about to add in any small way to what Tamer Shipp was troubled by. The world troubled a black man enough; it had troubled this man enough.

She heard Mr. Shipp chuckle, but she kept her eyes on Dream dancing around in the knee-high water of the creek in a bright red bikini, even though she didn't need the top yet.

“I'm like the ancient mariner,” his laughing voice said, sounding normal again. “Except I never did tell anybody straight out before.”

Mina didn't say that she didn't think she'd been told anything straight out, because she knew he was changing the subject. “Who's the ancient mariner?”

“In a poem. You'll read it.”

“A black poem?”

“No, Coleridge.”

“Do you ever wonder,” Mina asked, while half of her mind was busy being amused that this subject was safe ground for conversation, “why there aren't many black poets?”

“I've thought about it,” he said. “In this century, there are some,” he reminded her. Then he said, “That dance camp really got through to you, didn't it.”

Thinking about his Samuel Tillerman, Mina shook her head. “Nothing like they could have,” she said.

“Miss T-rou-ble. I bet you got through to them more than they did you.”

“I don't think so,” Mina told him. She watched Selma move out to knock Dream over and end the dance. The little girl's concentrated glance never wavered from her sister as she plowed through the water. “Selma!” Mina called. “Don't you do that, you hear me?”

Selma stopped, looked at Mina, then turned back to the shore. Samuel splashed water at her and she joined in the new game.

Mina took the subject even farther away. “What about Alice and this equivalency test she told us about. When does she take it?”

“You take it whenever you think you're ready. Why?”

“Why do you want her to?”

“It'll be a good thing for her.”

“To know that stuff?”

“No. I'd just like her to know she has a high school diploma. Alice could find work, something to do with retail clothing, if she had a diploma. She'd like the work, and she'd like herself a little better. That's my way of thinking about it. I like her fine, but she doesn't like herself so much. You know?”

Mina didn't know, but she could understand, she thought. Alice had no idea, she thought. Alice thought Tamer was ashamed of her, that he wanted her to improve herself. And Alice thought she'd fail.

Mina had seen some of those test booklets in the library, set on a whole shelf of test booklets for different jobs. She'd take a
look at one, and see how hard it was. Alice loved her husband enough to try, if she thought she had a chance to pass. Mina thought she'd take a look at the questions and see if it would be fair to persuade Alice to study for it. At least there was something she could do something about for Mr. Shipp.

T
he more Mina thought about it—and she thought about it a lot—the more she wondered about this Samuel Tillerman. It wasn't anything Mr. Shipp had exactly said that made her want to know more. It was his voice, the sound of his voice. Thinking about it, wondering about it, listening to his voice in her ear's memory, Mina tried to understand what she'd heard. His voice had been like—a bassoon. Usually his voice was like a cello, melodious and round. But this wasn't his usual voice, when he talked about Samuel Tillerman. There were new resonances, and his voice got heavier. It was as if he opened up his chest and spoke out of his secret heart.

Mina knew about secret hearts in people. But if she were to do what she had never done, talk to someone about Tamer Shipp, she didn't think her voice would change in that particular way. Mina thought probably he carried a grief that was both sharp and long in him. Like a bassoon where you could always hear that it could go higher or lower even though it didn't actually do that, he hadn't ever built up any edges for this grief. There was no missing a bassoon, even in a full orchestra, as it played its notes out.

Thinking of all that, Mina smiled to herself, and then laughed within herself: She guessed that dance camp was turning out to be good for something, if it was helping her to understand why what Mr. Shipp had told her troubled her so. She wished, for Mr.
Shipp, that what lay at his secret heart was as good as what lay at her own secret heart. She wished there were such things as healing hands and that she had them and that she could lay them on Mr. Shipp, on this grief. She wondered about Samuel Tillerman.

One September night, just before school started, she asked her parents. “Did you ever hear of anyone called Tillerman, any family around here?”

“I don't think,” her mother said. “Why? Is this somebody you've met?”

“No,” Mina said.

“There's one I know of,” her father said. “She's a widow, and I don't think she has any children. She's a strange one.” Her father was taking a week off again, a vacation with his family after the long summer.

“Strange?” Mina asked him.

“A hermit, or as near as makes no difference. She almost never comes out and the farm is going slowly to ruin. It was never much, but now it's rundown. Neglected. She doesn't have a car or anything. She keeps entirely to herself. Kind of wild-looking, she brings a boat into town maybe three times a year. You've probably never seen her, Raymonda.”

“Is she the one who smashed the window at the phone company?” Minas mother asked. “Is she dangerous?”

“Is she crazy?” Belle wanted to know.

“I couldn't say,” Poppa told them. “I'd hate to say, seeing as I don't know anything about her. I expect she's just terribly alone. Her people just—just let her be alone. Whatever made you ask, Mina?”

“I heard the name,” Mina said, “and I wondered.” She guessed someone who was a widow could have had a son. But she couldn't think of anything to be learned by trying to talk to some crazy old white hermit lady.

“I don't understand how her people can just leave her alone like that,” Poppa said.

“When I get to be a crazy old lady,” Momma said, “I expect you all to take good care of me.”

“Then you better not get too crazy,” Belle answered. “I don't want to have to explain to my children that their old granny is a nut case.”

“I'll take care of you, Momma,” Louis promised.

“Why should you get crazy?” Mina asked.

“For one thing, if I do, then I can do all the things I've wanted to, and nobody will make me feel guilty. I can sit around and eat chocolate bars and read until my eyes pop. I can—oh—say what I think the way I think it and nobody'll take me seriously enough to give your father grief about his nasty wife. Life might be a lot easier.”

“Then who'll take care of me?” Poppa asked.

“I will,” Momma told him. “For you I won't be crazy. Or maybe you won't know the difference.”

“I'm glad to know that the perils of our old age together are so well planned.” Poppa laughed.

“It's the perils of this coming year I'm having trouble with. If Zandor loses his scholarship—”

“That'll be his own fault. For playing around so much,” Belle said.

“That's no consolation,” Momma answered. “I don't know where we'd get the money to make up the difference.”

“If Zandor does let his grades slip and loses the scholarship,” Poppa announced, “he will have to make up the difference himself. But I doubt he will. He's a quick student, even if he's not dedicated.”

“Besides, he can work, he got himself a job for the summer, so he must be serious about getting through college,” Mina
reminded her parents. Like CS, Zandor found summer work up near school, where pay was better.

“Admit it. Aren't you glad now you've got one child who doesn't want to go to college?” Belle asked.

“You know, I'm not sure I am,” Poppa said.

“It's up to her, Amos,” Momma repeated her old argument. “I can see why Belle would rather do a secretarial course and work in Washington, or some large city. Crisfield doesn't have that much to offer by way of marriageable young men.”

“Mother!” Belle protested. “You act like all I think about is getting married.”

“Why shouldn't you?” her mother asked. “You'll do a good job of it and you'll like it. As long as you've taken some training, you'll have skills should you need employment.”