Deep in the Heart of Me (36 page)

We get near home, and I'm of two minds. I want to see them more than anything, but I'd go right past home and straight to St. Louis if I had a choice.

I know that would break her heart…Maman's. And somewhere it would break mine, but not enough to stop me.

I just want to see her, touch her, look into her eyes. If I can do that, I'll know. I'll know if she cares for someone like me.

She says she does, but sometimes…I don't think she's telling me everything. She finished winter term, and good old Miss Rivers took her to Europe for the summer. She kept asking me if it made me feel terrible and I said she needed to do what she wanted.

It put me in a terrible mood, but what was I going to do? So all summer I thought of the miles between us, an ocean at least, and I had to try and shove her out of my mind which was well near impossible.

I never told Ulie this, but I dreamed at night of being a famous baseball player, and I'd be playing, and she'd be in the stands with her hoity-toity friends, and she'd see me, and I'd hit a homerun like the Babe, with bases loaded and they'd all swoon and there she would be thinking how she should of done differently. Maybe stayed on the farm and married me.

She won't be there when we get home. She's in fall term now, and she took a special class, and she's in some other part of Missiouri on a historical tour. She was so upset she would miss my homecoming, she said. I didn't want to tell her at all, but Elsie did. Some things never change, and big mouths don't tend to get smaller. So then she writes me all upset, and I am thinking who cares, I'll be out. So she's getting home this same night and can't get here until tomorrow. I won't sleep. I'll be waiting in my ratty clothes, and she'll probably be swell as can be, looking beautiful and she'll say why do I want some hayseed convict?

I wish I had time to be famous. But coming out of reform school like the biggest punk ever lived, I don't even know why she'd come here at all.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself. Guys have stories and mine ain't a thing in comparison. My own pop has a story that makes mine sound like candy. But it has touched me none the less. It has made a difference…what I've been through. It should be that way if you're human. Things should make a difference and matter, or you get like Boss or Belly and I ain't gonna let that happen to me.

"You want to stop in Springfield and get some of those pancakes?" Dad says.

He's treating me, I don't know, like a girl or something. Like he wants to make it up to me like it's his fault. He's getting…gray hair. I don't think he had that when I went in.

"I just want to go home," I say.

We get on our road, and I'm sitting forward. First, we pass Uncle John's, and it looks about the same. I missed a whole season of growing and harvest. Here. I did my share at the school.

Uncle John's out now spreading manure. Dad lies on the honker and Uncle John don't even hear a thing with that tractor grinding away.

Me and Dad laugh. "That deaf bugger," Dad says, and we laugh some more.

We're at our lane then and there he is. Joseph. He's on the stanchion waving and jumping. Ebbie is with him, and I would not know that big boy he's grown so much over the year.

Dad stops then, and Joseph slaps my hand through the window I've opened. Ebbie does not but he's grinning at me like I'm a stranger. They climb in back, and they are hooting so the ones at the house will be sure to hear I'm on my way.

It's starting to dawn on me now. I'm free.

At the house, my God. You'd think I'd been to war. Well, maybe I have. Three boys died while I was there. They said it was flu. I saw them bring a boy to the graveyard when I snuck out one night to have a smoke. He was in a wheelbarrow, and they took him out by moonlight and buried him that way.

He was sick the whole time I was there so I didn't know him. But the other two, one was from my bunkhouse.

My sisters, everyone, has grown, but Pee-Wee is the biggest surprise. He's not a baby now. He hides behind my mother's skirts anyway, like I am a stranger to him. The old me would have gone for him and made him laugh, but I don't push him now. He wants to be wary he has a right.

My mom. When she hugs me, I feel the bones. Her pretty face is thin and gaunt, and the light in her eyes is wrong, too bright, like the last light on before dark.

When she hugs me and cries, I move us to her room and kick the door closed because I'm crying too and this is something more.

I think she nearly died. I think she might still. "Maman," I say.

She touches my face and makes me say it again. "Maman."

She is speaking to herself as she examines me. "My boy," and other words. "Oh."

I take hold of her hands. They tremble. "Mom," I say. I sniff like a child. I am a child right now, and I haven't been one, not for a long time.

"I'll get better now," she says, as much to me as someone else. "I'll get better," she promises.

We have eaten supper, and it is like I'm a guest for a while, then they start talking, and I'm used to living with a herd at the school, but we don't get to talk so much at once. And I'm overwhelmed like it's hard to be here, good and not easy. Like something is missing, or someone. Is that Sobe or is it me? I can't tell.

So they are telling me stories, and I'm glad for them, they can be so innocent. I get this feeling, and it's hard to eat, good as Mom's food is, I just need some time.

Dad is full of plans in the barn. He wants to turn us into a dairy, our own dairy which means we'd need to put in equipment for pasteurizing the milk. I can't keep up with it. I don't know.

Dad says, “Oh, wait until the boys come—Pat and Mike and Bill. Uncle Frank too. They're doing deliveries, filling oil tanks. Just wait until they see you, boyo. It's all they talked about.”

I don't know why.

They've all been living. And I've been doing someone else's work. It's a terrible feeling. Like this farm is not mine anymore.

What right do I have to it? Or anything?

Soon as I can I say, "Dad, I'm not trying to get out of the work, but I want to go off. A walk," I say, and that's it. It's freezing, but that never stopped me. Dad tells Joseph to let me go. There's work to do. If he'd wanted to come, I would have let him.

But once I start out I'm glad I'm alone.

I walk and walk. I find that silver tree whose branches stand out for their light color against all the others. It's a Sycamore, pretty well dead, but that doesn't stop it from being the first one to catch your eye. Reminds me of Zeus's fork. It just does.

Oh, those black birds don't leave for winter, and I love the sight they make pitching across a winter sky. The air here, the river is in it when it blows right. I hear that train and close my eyes, and I know that ground beneath me rumbles with it even though it's two, three miles north. I been laying in that state issue hearing that same wail for months.

But here, I could run along it and jump on. See that's the difference.

It's the same around here, but it's not. There are changes. Things I don't remember, like one of my trees blown over from a bad storm. And Dad broke less ground past fall in the front pasture.

I promised her pecans, and I never made good. I search the ground. They did a good job. I can barely fill my pockets.

The boys cleaned them up for me, sold them in town. It's all fine, as fine as can be. They're fine without me just like we got fine without Shaun. The world finds a way and on it goes, that wheel moves like Dad says.

I keep going, stepping across that frozen ground breaking shallow in the snow. Not long after I get to the shell of Shaun's…life. It's an ancient ruin now covered with white. I could sift it and find things, but boys will do that in years to come, and it won't mean a thing to them, but something old, some old treasure like a pot from the stove and they'll say, "Lookie what I found." And it will be Peg's. And they won't know. They won't want to.

I go far as the old homestead, and I slide along the creek, and I wonder how I'm gonna settle here because I can't keep walking. Well, maybe I could. Maybe I could keep going to the river and to that school. To Sobe.

See I don't listen to all my fears. They speak, they shout. I don't listen to what I don't like in her letters, that uppity tone.

Cause underneath it all sure as there is life under my boots, under this snow, me and her are one. It happened long time ago, and it got forged hot and quick. I don't know what has to fall away before she knows, but I haven't forgotten.

I never will.

I have my money on me. It was under my mattress where I left it. I came by it hard, that money. I am dressed like a shabby bum, but I have never been a dandy. My hair needs to be cut, and I have that old look in my eyes. But I just keep walking then. I'll go to the train. They catch you on one they beat the shit out of you, but that doesn't scare me. I'd like them to try. I'd like it.

I could laugh at that. Nothing scares me now. Nothing at all. They'll wonder where the hell I am, but I will call them when I get somewhere.

I'm going for Sobe. That's all.

I ride the train over that bridge that looks so dark and haunted. I like it, standing on the flatbed letting the icy wind blow against my face. The river below looks dark and deep and sludged with muddy weight. It's separated us long enough.

I grew up close to this place all my life, but I stayed home like a good boy, stayed well on my side of it, and now I marvel how it was I didn't wonder more about what was around me.

I met this guy sprawled next to me, his pack his pillow and him singing songs about the railroad. His name is Cory or Rory.

He shared his bottle with me and rolled me a smoke too, and helped me block the wind and find a light and I am grinning as I finish that fag and flick it over the side into that dark…nothing.

It's cold as a Polar Bear's tit. Teat then. I laugh at that. I've milked some big ones, but no Polar Bears.

Shit. I'd give it a try.

I take off then, running over that flat car and jumping onto the boxcar that's in front and taking hold of the ladder with my frozen hands and up I go to the top, and I reach in my coat, and I swig that last, and the bottle goes into the blackness too.

I stand there and look above at all that ironwork crisscrossing the top of this bridge, and the sky beyond is another dark abyss and I am in the firmament between as God did separate one from another and gave us this dry space to live and air to breathe and it's more than what happens to me, my life, well the wheel has turned. The wheel has moved, and I am on my journey, on my way. I thought something had to turn it, but I can make it move. Me.

And I wonder who built this bridge. Maybe I will someday—build a bridge. Or hit a ball. Or plant a field. Or be her man. Be Sobe's…man. And we could ride the rails her and me. I laugh at that, laugh a lot because I don't own a thing, not anymore, but I might own anything, even a bridge I kick that wheel enough, spin it strong and fast and see where I land.

We get on the west side, and the whistle blows, and here we come. Soon we'll head into Union Station, and we're already starting to slow some. Cory says to drop off before we get in there and bossman waits with a club.

I'd like to see him try.

But in another half hour, I am jumping off, and I make my way over the tracks, and I got another smoke behind my ear cause that Cory is a most generous fellow, and I gave him two dollars so he could get a bed maybe, even though I know he'll go for more whiskey over a mattress and pillow.

I see the warehouses for unloading the barges that ferry the goods that come upriver and down. I'd like to be a bargeman, pole in the water keeping that slow flat field from getting stuck. Long as I could keep moving.

It smells like the Big Muddy, and that's a fresh smell, earthy smell, smells the way catfish tastes if you know that kind of meat, it's good fried like Mom does. We have pulled them from this very river, me and Uncle Frank and Pat. But I've yet to come here on my own.

One time, I meant to come. To marry a girl. But I got detained, when he put his hands over mine and squeezed that trigger. That's how I remember it. I got stuck then.

I walk into the city and after a couple of blocks I hear the trolley car on the rails, the slanted arm sparking overhead where it touches the wire. I was going to ride this with Sobe. But I see how others get on, and I get in line and ask about the school as he makes change so I can pay my fare. See, I am sober and able to make my way.

I don't take a seat.

I don't want anything closed in. I don't want to talk. It's almost pitch dark, and there are lamps coming on along the street. I get off where I need to cause the trolley goes straight. The conductor said something about catching a bus. I don't know.

It smells here, like people frozen over, cement and bricks shiny with ice. It's not even Thanksgiving, and the North Pole has leaked down, and everything shines with it.

Sobe is supposed to get back late. Then Miss Rivers is driving her to the farm in the morning because that one had chaperoned the trip so she'll be right there because she always is from what Sobe writes. Her watchdog. Her keeper. That old maid with no idea for herself. She didn't teach this year, but she has plenty of ideas for Sobe.

I'm thinking Sobe's name, and I can't help smile. I ask someone, and they show me Magnolia Avenue, and I walk then, and it's cold, and I see my breath. Houses are shoulder to shoulder, and some are home to four families, or six or more and they must be nose to nose in there. I try and imagine what it would be like to live this close. I think of the bunkhouse, noisy as a barn while they try to settle. They are tired from the work, but I've been that tired all my life, and they settle into bad dreams and sometimes they wet the bed, and they ain't building a thing for themselves, like Ulie said, it's all for someone else, for a town you ain't a part of, for the men over you who pride themselves on getting the most from you but there's nowhere to rise for doing a good job. Maybe they raise you a nickel. Fires of hell for a nickel?

Ulie has to keep his chin up. Sometimes…he gets dark moods. But six months he'll be out, and that's what I told him. Do it quiet. Stay out of the hole. There is nothing worth saying or doing to get them on you.

If Shad gives him trouble…well, we'll get old Shad.

I bum a light and smoke that other one. I walk and walk for blocks, but it's nothing for me. Hell, I could run this. Backwards.

I'm moving, and no one is asking me where I'm going. Free American.

I see those buses they were talking about, but I like it on foot. In the dark. The walkway is cement and cut in squares and every two steps I put another one behind me. I think on it, I can make one step each. My legs are long and strong. I'm strong.

Closer to the school the houses get big and further apart. Fancy, like rich people or something. Three stories all lit like it's Christmas.

I reach that school and get on the grounds. She told me she sees the square from her window. I turn around and see it like she must.

You feel it here, learning. I picture her running across these grounds, but she won't be in those britches. I have to make another picture in my mind. She's a young lady. Something like this girl that's coming toward me now, her arms loaded with books.

I speak up before she can pass, "Can you tell me where the group will come in from Joplin? A historical class…." I trail off. I don't know for sure.

I make her nervous I guess. She looks around like she's wondering if anyone else is nearby. I know I just got out, but I'm no criminal.

"You know those students that went on that trip?" I say.

She shakes her head. "Um, I'm sorry, I don't. There are several groups out. When they return, they usually pull in front of the dormitory," she says juggling her load and pointing to a big red-brick building across the courtyard.

I pull the door for her and say, "Thank you kindly." I may never say 'kindly,' again. My mother taught me that, but no one says it once you get from home.

She's still out. Well, Sobe said it was like that. They would get back tired and load into the dormitory.

She talks in her letters, every detail. I ate her words like candy.

I remembered them, but I looked at them over and over because she wrote them, so I touched them, studied them, smelled them and got rid of them before Boss could get them and read them too.

I'm so close now. There's a bench, but I don't want to sit.

I get to that dormitory, and someone goes in, and I do too. I stand inside out of the wind and the cold for a minute, but it doesn't feel right, me standing here. A couple of girls come in, and I get looks like, 'what in hell are you doing here?'

But they giggle about me and I ain't having that.

So I go back out.

I move my feet some. I think of a hot cup of coffee, but I'm used to not getting what I think I need. I don't need much.

A girl goes by, stops and lights a smoke, blows that smoke and her breath in the cold, it's all a cloud of white. She smiles at me. "Hey handsome," she says, and I can't believe she's bold like that. I could be anybody, and she doesn't even know me.

"Could I bum a smoke?" I say because Ulie says you use it. He calls it charm. That's how you survive. I ain't trying to do that because I don't think I have it. I just want a smoke.

She is happy to give me one. She even lights it, and I'm thinking, 'Damn what now?'

So I ask if she knows Sobe and she doesn't think so. I ask about the students coming in from Joplin, and she has a friend on that trip. They'd be here soon unless they had a flat tire.

I haven't stopped to think until now how I just took off. I ain't sorry about it. What's a little trip? I'll be home soon. The important thing is I'm out of the can. They can relax now. Long as I'm free, they have no worries.

Here he comes then. Bossman. Who am I, what am I doing hanging around here. I been drinking?

"I'm not doing anything wrong," I say. I didn't know he could smell the whiskey. With that beak of his no wonder, though.

He wants names. I tell him Miss Pat Rivers. I don't want to get Sobe in trouble, not that I'm doing a damn thing wrong like I said.

"Oh, Miss Rivers?" he says confused. Maybe he's gone lovesick for the old prune. They'd make a beautiful pair.

"Yes," I say. "And you can't blame a fellow for trying to stay warm on a night like this."

"What's your name again?"

"Tillo. Tillo Smith," I say loudly. Like I'm not hiding a thing. And I'm not. But these types…little intelligence, lots of suspicions. Used to being two steps behind so they bully everything. If you can't out think it, you can hit it.

Well, I use my brain and then I hit back.

"You can wait in my office," he says.

"No thanks," I say.

"Well, you can't stand here. This is a young lady's school," he says.

"I ain't thinking of enrolling," I say. "Last I looked…."

"You're drunk, Sir. I'll ask you to wait somewhere else then."

"Look, buddy, soon as they get in we're on our way. I ain't taking up too much sidewalk."

"You can wait in my office, or I'll have to…."

I walk across the street to the bench.

"Young man….," he says.

"Tillo," I call from on the bench. "Tillo Smith."

He stares at me, and here's where the smarts ain't going to show. Pretty soon he'll get a buddy, and that's when it will start.

"Just sitting here," I say. "Looking at the stars." '
Fookers
,' I add under my breath. After a year at State, I could be a ventriloquist.

A bus pulls in then. 'St. Paul's,' it says on the side. Boss can't do two things at once. He has to tell the guy where to park.

There's just the driver. He parks it and gets out, and he pulls a smoke, and I'd punch a fool for another. They share the driver's pack, and he's telling that bugger about his trials with me. They both look over. I got my elbows back of the bench.

I wave my fingers. Come and get me
Fooker
Two. It's a free country.

That's when another bus grinds it's way in, all lit inside and bigger than the one from St. Paul's.

The windows are closed, but I can hear the singing from this bench. I stand up. My heart, well I know she's on this. I feel that.

I try not to look like a sap. Maybe she won't even notice I'm over here.

That bus pulls in front of the other, to the curb in front of the dormitory. I hear the doors open, and the singing is louder, laughter, a high-old time on that bus and I see girls in there, but guys too. Well, ain't that something, this is both kinds.

And I don't want to see the next thing, but I pick her out, and she's by the window, and she's talking away, and I get up on that bench, and I can see right in, and she's sitting with some Johnny Rah-Rah, and he's hanging on her every word and adding a few of his own.

Well, don't let me stop your parade, I mutter.

They're towards the back, and they're about the last ones getting on their feet. Well, it's so engrossing, I guess, and he tilts his head back, and his big mouth is open like a sink hole, and nothing can be that funny. I mean nothing.

I jump off that bench, and I'm waiting for her head to rise and for her to make her way out of there. I get back on that bench. He goes in for a kiss swear to God I'll be over there so fast. No, no I won't. She'll never see me again, that's all.

I've been the biggest idiot of all.

That bus looks about empty, and I see them getting off, and he's behind her, looking at her the whole time, and she turns all the way around a couple of times. He does that laugh again, that hyena.

Some of the guys are filing into the smaller bus, and they are shouting goodbyes to the girls and that gaggle is shouting back at the herd.

I'm waiting for that fooking empty bus to move because I can't see her or that other one. But I'm not going to wait, I'll catch them at it, and she won't ever….

I walk across the road and around the bus, and there's still some in a group, some still singing like a bunch of ducks, and I see her and he's there talking like crazy, touching her arm and she has her hands in her coat pockets, and she's rising on her toes, and he sees me first, and I'm out of place, forgot my letter sweater, I look like I'm off the wharf, or out of State School. Wrong school. Wrong
fooking
everything.