Down Sand Mountain (15 page)

Mr. Lauper tried to pull away but couldn’t break loose from the grip. He said, “Now, look here, you let go right now. This isn’t right.”

But Walter Wratchford wouldn’t let go. He told Mr. Lauper again to give it to the boy, which meant me, and which meant the envelope. He jabbed at Mr. Lauper’s pocket. “You were gonna keep it, weren’t you?” he said.

Mr. Lauper said, “Certainly not. The boy wouldn’t accept it, so I was going to return it to the family.”

Walter Wratchford said, “Yeah, I bet you were. Just give it to him.”

Mr. Lauper looked at me like he wanted me to explain everything to Walter Wratchford about how my dad wouldn’t let me accept any money from playing “Taps,” but my mouth wouldn’t work. Also I guess I really did want the money, and I figured if somebody made Mr. Lauper give it to me and made me take it, then it wouldn’t be the same thing as disobeying Dad. “Tell him,” Mr. Lauper said, but I still couldn’t say anything, and he got disgusted with me and pulled the envelope out of his pocket and said, “Here,” and when I didn’t reach for it right away, he dropped it on the ground and jerked his arm away from Walter Wratchford and spun around on his heel and stomped off.

Walter Wratchford picked it up, looked inside, and handed it to me. “It’s five dollars,” he said.

I didn’t move and he said, “Well, go on and take it,” but all of a sudden I couldn’t do that, either, so I said, “You keep it. I don’t want it.”

Walter Wratchford said a cuss word, then he told me again to just take the dang money. I shook my head and said I wasn’t allowed to. He said, “How come?” And I said my dad wouldn’t let me because it was a patriotic duty to play the bugle for the funeral since it was a soldier’s funeral. That made Walter Wratchford laugh, and then he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his uniform pocket and stuck one in his mouth. He lit a match, then held the match to the envelope with the five dollars stuck back in it, until that started to burn, and once it was shooting up in a big flame and you could see the five-dollar bill inside on fire, too, he lit his cigarette from that and he held it while it burned down closer and closer to his fingers. Finally he dropped it on the ground, where it burned out by itself. “I’ll tell you something about patriotic,” he said. “There isn’t nothing more patriotic than taking money for something. Especially if you might of earned it. Otherwise you’re just a sucker.” The way he said it, though, I kind of thought he didn’t really mean it.

He saluted me but not like he really meant that, either, and then he left, just like that. From behind I could see he had all his long hair bunched under his hat. Down on the ground, there was still a corner of the five-dollar bill that hadn’t quite burned all the way up. I figured it was probably worth about a nickel, so I stuck it in my pocket. Walter Wratchford’s old Ford Fairlane chugged past on the road and he waved to me, still holding his cigarette, and I waved back. I put my bugle back in the case and tied it on to my bicycle basket so it wouldn’t bounce out when I was riding home, and I hoped Mr. Lauper wouldn’t call my dad and tell him about the thing with Walter Wratchford, because I wouldn’t ever be able to explain what happened since I wasn’t too sure myself.

I WENT BACK OVER TO DARLA’S HOUSE for a dance lesson Monday after school, and I decided to quit being mad at her when she didn’t seem to even notice. Her mom got on to me about staring at my feet. She said it was like typing: you looked at the document, not at your fingers, which was why they called it
touch
typing, for goodness sake, except that in dancing, it was your partner instead of a document that you were supposed to look at, but not ever your feet.

Darla sat in a chair in the corner and folded a piece of paper smaller and smaller until it looked like an ant could use it for toilet paper, and then when I had to go, she gave it to me and told me to give it to Wayne. I asked her what it said but she wouldn’t tell me, and just to make sure, she wound Scotch tape around it about fifty times before shoving it back in my hand and then me out the door, as if I had done something wrong or tried to read it already even though it wasn’t meant for me.

She did the same thing the next time I saw her at her house, on Wednesday, and I couldn’t imagine what she might have to say to Wayne in a letter, or in an ant-toilet-paper-size Scotch-taped-up paper wad, either. I told myself I didn’t care, although I really did, but there was no way to get inside what she gave me without tearing something or folding it back the wrong way. It was very frustrating. I asked if she wanted to go riding bikes to Bowlegs Creek, or even Sand Mountain, but she said she couldn’t, she had too much to do, her and Darwin had to rehearse with their mom for a talent show in Tampa. Her mom had just left to go to work at Dr. Rexroat’s, though, so I swore I wasn’t coming back, dance lesson or no dance lesson. But then after another couple of days, there I was, knocking on her door again.

Darwin came down sometimes, and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he sat at the top of the stairs and I could barely see him up there just sitting in the dark, not moving, not doing anything, like he was watching me but not speaking, since I wouldn’t ever go up to his room with him after that one time.

I heard their grandfather every once in a while — coughing up stuff and spitting really loud upstairs somewhere. His footsteps and the floorboards creaking when he went from his room to the bathroom. The toilet flushing. More coughing and spitting. Calling for Darwin.

Me and Darla still didn’t talk much at school, I don’t know why. Maybe it had something to do with how I especially noticed then that she didn’t look like the other girls, mostly because of her Shirley Temple hair. All the other girls had straight hair, or curled on the sides, or bangs. They wore blue button shirts or yellow button shirts with Peter Pan collars, and plaid skirts, and long socks, and penny loafers, like it was their uniform. Sometimes Darla wore that, too, but it never looked the same on her as it did on them. Once, I saw her at Wayne’s locker, standing by herself like she was waiting for him, but he didn’t show up. I don’t think Wayne talked to her at school, either.

One night when we were lying in bed I asked Wayne what the heck was going on with all the notes from Darla, plus how come he never told me what happened to him and her that night at the Skeleton Hotel?

“Will you shut up?” he said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“So that means you’re afraid to tell me.”

“Why would I be afraid to tell you? Why would I be afraid of anything from you?”

“OK, then, tell me.”

“We were looking for you.”

“Yeah. Right. And how come she keeps writing you notes?”

“I don’t know. She’s a weirdo.”

“No, she’s not.”

“OK, she’s not. It’s all part of a secret spy ring. I can’t tell you any more about it or you’ll be in danger. The whole family will be in danger. They’ll kill Mom and Dad and Tink. They’ll kill you first.”

“You are such a liar.”

“Believe it or don’t believe it. I don’t care. You’re such a baby, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, would a baby do this?” I swung my pillow down at him hard and knew I scored a direct hit to the face, because he yelled that I scratched his eye, which might or might not have been true. You never knew with Wayne when he was faking. He yelled some other things that I also couldn’t repeat, and he kept it up, trying to make me feel bad for mutilating him, for actually blinding him, until Dad came in and threatened us both with the belt if we didn’t pipe down.

It should have been that Wayne was mad at me since I hurt his eye, but for some reason he wasn’t. Instead I was the one who stayed mad, so that the next time Darla gave me one of her notes, I didn’t hand it over to him. I opened it right up once I left her house. There was nothing about a spy ring, and there was nothing about what I was really worried about, which was them maybe kissing. There was nothing about anything, really. All it said was, “Why don’t you ever write me back?” I couldn’t see the point of a whole entire note with all that careful folding and taping just to say that to Wayne. I could have told her he never wrote to anybody, not even Santa Claus at Christmas when we were little. Mom said he owed all our relatives thank-you notes for presents from three years ago, and whenever he bought Mom or Dad a birthday card or a Mother’s Day or a Father’s Day card, he always forgot to sign it, much less write a note or something. So what chance did Darla Turkel have of getting a letter of her own from a guy like that?

I threw her note in the trash.

At school meanwhile, everything was about the same. The Mighty Mighty Miners had won all their games so far, even against Zephyrhills, their archrival. Those seniors Moe and Head kept taking my rolls at lunchtime off my lunch tray, and nobody looked at me or said anything except that sorry kid Connolly Voss, who wouldn’t shut up about it (“What are you — a man or a mouse?”). I tried one more time to go to the boys’ restroom, but Moe saw me and said he was going to conk my head against a locker if I ever did that again, so I kept peeing outside, behind the cafeteria, killing a bigger and bigger circle of grass even though I tried to aim in exactly the same spot every time.

I didn’t ever get my red belly, and I asked around about it and found out that I wasn’t the only one. Actually there was a bunch of seventh-graders that didn’t get the red belly, either — like Darwin Turkel and people like that — which got me thinking that when they said the seniors gave
everybody
a red belly who was in seventh grade, they didn’t mean it. The truth was they only chased you down and gave you a red belly if you counted for something, so in a way, not getting a red belly was worse than getting a red belly. Maybe not for the Darwins of Sand Mountain, who had probably already given up on getting people to like them and fitting in and all, but I hadn’t given up on those things yet. I was still pretty sure I could eventually figure out what I needed to do, like grow some more, and get faster, and not try to be so smart in class — stuff like that.

I wasn’t so sure anymore that being the Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy in the minstrel show would make people like me, but since Boopie Larent seemed to be doing OK in school, a lot better than me, and since he got his red belly the first week, I wasn’t so sure that being the Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy in the minstrel show next year
wouldn’t
help, either, as long as I kept the shoe polish off and nobody thought I was trying to be colored for real. So I figured I would keep going to lessons even though Darla seemed sad and didn’t talk to me much unless her mom made her dance with me, and I even practiced sometimes when I didn’t think anybody was looking.

One day I had a hall pass to take the absent and tardy slips to the principal’s office during homeroom and I went by the auditorium on the way there. The doors were open and Chollie the janitor was just finishing mopping the stage, leaning back on his mop and I guess admiring his work. I looked in again on my way back to homeroom and he was gone. The auditorium was dark except for the stage lights, like there was about to be a performance or something, only nobody was there, only me, so for some reason I went in. I was pretty nervous, so I closed the doors behind me, held my breath, and listened for about a minute. Then I went up onstage.

I pretended everybody applauded for a long time, but I breathed deep to get my concentration. Darla’s mom said you should never hurry. She said you can’t rush greatness. I waved to the crowd, took my time shoving the hall pass into my jeans pocket. Then, when I was good and ready, I did a sort of tap dance like I’d seen Darla do, though her mom hadn’t taught me any of that stuff yet. The people loved it, anyway, and I took a big bow when I finished.

Chollie hadn’t just mopped up there, he had also waxed, so I took my shoes off and just kept on my socks, then took a running start offstage and into a long slide through the lights. I twirled and glided through a bunch of silky moves I made up, like Fred Astaire. I tried to spin around like a ballet dancer, but that made me dizzy, so I flashed my arms out to my sides and dropped to one knee and did the “Swanee, how I love you, how I love you,” like I’d seen in the minstrel show. I did everything I could think of up there, even the lean-way-forward-and-pretend-to-run-but-not-really while I was singing: “Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy.”

Then Chollie walked back in. I stopped cold, or tried to stop, only I fell down instead. He had come back for his bucket and mop, but I hadn’t heard a thing until he was right there. He took hold of his mop handle, with the mop in the bucket, and looked it over like he was inspecting for damage, although he was chuckling, too, I guess about me falling on the floor like that. Then he looked down at me.

“Why you in here messing up my floor?” he said. I didn’t know what to answer at first, so I just stared at him. He was tall and mostly bald but not old or anything. He wore his janitor’s uniform of khaki pants and shirt with his name stenciled over the pocket. His voice was low and didn’t sound mean like you might expect.

“I have a hall pass,” I said finally. I got to my feet and stuck it out toward him.