Jimmy (7 page)
“That was quick. You're getting better and better at finding things on the map. Do you know how long it would take to drive in a car from Piney Grove to California?”
“No, sir.”
“Three days.”
Jimmy's eyes grew big. “Have you ever been there?”
“No, but I understand it's beautiful. I guess I'll never get to see it.”
Buster scratched at the back door.
“He wants us to come outside and play,” Jimmy said.
Grandpa folded up the map, then they went into the big backyard, which ended at a high, thick hedge. Two gray birdbaths sat across from each other on a wooden deck that Jimmy had helped stain. Grandpa set birdhouses all overâsome high, some lowâfor all the different birds that visited the yard. In the summertime, Grandma made peach pies from fruit she picked herself off the two trees.
But the most interesting item in the backyard was a solitary black utility pole.
Forty-five feet tall, the naked black post rose from the ground like a great tree with no branches. No telephone wires or power lines ran to or from it. No security light hung from its top. No basketball
goal was nailed to it.
It was a gift. It was a climbing pole.
When Grandpa retired from the Georgia Power Company, the local office wanted to give him a gift. Everyone knew Grandpa loved to fish, so someone said they should buy him a new motor for the little boat he used to take out on the lakes. However, when the engineer in charge of the office asked Grandma what her husband would like as a reminder of his days as a power-company employee, she surprised them all.
“Are you sure?” the engineer asked.
“Yes.” She nodded. “A pole in our backyard.”
“Nobody thinks a power pole is a decorative addition to their residence,” the engineer said. “Everyone wants underground power.”
“Not Jim. He thinks they're beautiful. Without those poles, he wouldn't have had a job.”
“But are you okay with a power pole in your yard?”
Grandma smiled. “It won't be in the front yard. Put it toward the rear of the lot.”
So, shortly after Grandpa left his house for his final day at work, a three-man crew showed up. In a few hours, the men dug a hole, dropped in the pole, tied an enormous red bow around it, and stuck a flare on top. After taking Grandpa to lunch, his fellow workers drove their yellow trucks in a line all the way up Ridgeview Drive and stopped in front of Grandpa's home. Tying a blindfold across Grandpa's eyes, they led him into the backyard. Then they lit the flare and removed the blindfold. Grandpa looked up and laughed.
“How did you know I really wanted one?” he asked Grandma.
“Forty-one years of marriage,” she replied without a change of expression.
Grandpa and Jimmy stepped into the yard. Buster abandoned a squirrel and raced up to them.
“You're getting bigger, aren't you?” Grandpa asked Jimmy, patting him on the back.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you ready?” Grandpa asked.
“For what?”
A
t the rear of the yard next to the hedge, Grandpa had built a neat wooden shed for his garden tools and John Deere mower. On the inside wall of the shed, he kept his pole-climbing gear. Beneath his climbing hooks, he placed a worn pair of the high-top black boots linemen wore. Since his heart attack, he'd not been up the pole.
When Jimmy was younger, Grandpa gave him rides to the top of the pole. Leaning against the old man's chest with a safety harness wrapped around his waist and legs, Jimmy would rest his hands on the safety belt as Grandpa moved up the surface of the pole. Linemen dig their climbing hooks into the surface of the pole, and Daddy said that in his prime Grandpa could scurry up the pole as nimbly as a monkey after a bunch of bananas. Even in retirement, Grandpa could carry Jimmy to the top of the pole for a panoramic view of Piney Grove in a couple of minutes. As he climbed, Grandpa would slide the safety belt up while leaning back to keep everything snug. The climbing hooks made a crunching sound as they penetrated the black creosote into the pine wood beneath.
“Climbing a pole is like ballet,” Grandpa said. “It takes special muscles that you don't use for anything else.”
Jimmy wasn't sure about ballet, but he could sense the strength in Grandpa's thighs.
“I've been on poles when it was raining so hard you couldn't see ten feet in any direction, and I've felt the wind try to rip me off the pole and throw me into a dark cloud. Twice, lightning struck within fifty feet of me. Once, a tree fell and hit the pole where I was working, and I found myself wrapped up in the branches.”
When Grandpa told stories, Jimmy could see pictures in his head of what had happened.
“I'm glad for bucket trucks,” Grandpa said. “But the younger workers never learned to climb like the old hands.”
Jimmy never tired of the view from the top of the pole. Over the roof of Grandpa's house, he could see his entire world. To the north lay the steeples of the town's two main churches: the skinny spire of the First Methodist Church and the thicker steeple of the First Baptist Church. The Presbyterians in Piney Grove worshiped in a smaller building without a steeple. Near the Methodist church, Jimmy could see the clock tower for the courthouse.
To the south, three storage silos for the Cattaloochie County Farmers' Co-op reached toward the heavens. Max told Jimmy the silos held rockets ready to blast off into space, but Grandpa said they were filled with corn and soybeans. Beyond the silos lay an open space for the two baseball fields where the Little League teams played. Jimmy liked to throw and catch a ball but didn't play on a team.
To the west, Jimmy saw housetops that peeked above dark green leaves in summer and pale green pine needles all year round. In the far distance, the trees gave way to a broad pasture that rose up a gently sloping hill.
To the east, the smokestack of an abandoned textile mill rose like a sinister red tower. A faint ring of black soot still clung to the bricks at the top of the giant chimney. A row of glass windows just below the roofline of the factory were visible from the top of the pole. Jimmy knew some of the windows were broken, shattered by boys who climbed the high chain-link fence and threw rocks.
Directly below, Jimmy could look down and see the clothes Mrs. Johnson hung on the line to dry and watch Mr. Nevin, a red kerchief around his neck and a broad-brimmed straw hat on his head, hoe his vegetable garden.
Once, when he was nine years old, Jimmy leaned against Grandpa's chest, looked to the north, and saw a Watcher suspended motionless in the air not far from the courthouse clock tower. The Watcher turned and silently nodded at Jimmy. Jimmy started to tell Grandpa, but with a thought the Watcher stopped him.
“Do you want to go down?” Grandpa had asked.
“No, sir,” Jimmy replied quietly. “I want to stay a little bit longer.”
The Watcher scanned the town, and Jimmy felt something warm, tender, sad, and happy all rolled into one inside his chest. The mix of feelings caused him to want to cry and laugh at the same time. Wondering what it all meant, he kept looking. Grandpa didn't intrude.
Then Jimmy understood. The Watcher cared deeply about the people of Piney Groveâno matter what they looked like or where they lived. Each person was part of a bigger whole: plain, pretty, rich, poor, black, and white. Jimmy took in the whole scene and listened to another kind of heartbeatâthe pulse of a small, out-of-the-way town between Atlanta and Birmingham. The Watcher seemed to share the feelings of the people on the ground beneath him. He knew what was happening in Piney Grove. And he cared.
Jimmy glanced toward the red smokestack, and when he looked back, the Watcher was gone. Sometimes when he lay in his bed at night, Jimmy stared at the ceiling and wondered if the Watcher continued to hover overhead.
G
RANDPA OPENED THE DOOR OF THE SHED.
I
T WAS DARK INSIDE.
“Wait here,” Grandpa said.
Jimmy heard Buster bark at the discovery of an interesting scent. In a minute, Grandpa emerged and handed Jimmy a smaller version of the old man's work boots.
“Try these on,” he said. “I was going to give them to you on your birthday, but today is a better day.”
They sat down beside one another on the single step in front of the shed, and Jimmy turned the boots over in his hands. He ran his fingers over the holes for laces at the bottom and the hooks toward the top.
“Thanks, Grandpa,” he said.
“Slide your foot in and pull the lower laces tight,” Grandpa said. “Then bring them back and forth in front of your leg under those little hooks.”
Jimmy nodded. “I've seen you do it.”
It took several tries before Jimmy correctly
wove the laces through the proper guides. He pulled them tight.
“Do you want me to tie the knot?” Grandpa asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Jimmy watched Grandpa's wrinkled fingers make a bow. Jimmy stood up and shifted his feet from side to side.
“How do they feel?” Grandpa asked.
“Different from my other shoes.”
“Walk over to the pole and back.”
Jimmy walked to the pole. Buster ran up and sniffed the new boots. Jimmy returned and sat down. He rubbed the end of the toe.
“It's hard.”
“There is steel in the toe to protect your foot in case something heavy falls on it.”
Jimmy nodded, not sure when he might meet such danger.
“Should I wear them when we go fishing?” he asked.
Grandpa stood up.
“No,” he replied. “These are pole-climbing boots.”
Grandpa came back with his climbing hooks in his hand.
“Would you like to learn how to climb the pole?” he asked.
Jimmy stared at the hooks and then glanced up at Grandpa's face to see if he was joking. Grandpa's face was serious.
“I can't do that,” Jimmy answered. “I liked it when you used to give me rides to the top. It was better than anything at the fair.”
Grandpa touched his chest. “I promised your grandma that I wouldn't climb anymore, and you're too big to fit in the harness. But that doesn't mean I can't teach you to do it yourself.”
“But I don't know how.”
“Do you ever climb the tree in your backyard?” Grandpa asked.
Grandpa had nailed two boards to a big tree so Jimmy could climb the thick trunk and reach the lowest limb. From there it was possible to go about eight feet higher and sit on the forked limb that Mama set as Jimmy's limit.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you scared when you're in the tree?”
“No, sir. I'm like you. I'm not afraid of being up high above the ground.”
Grandpa nodded. “And you're getting stronger all the time. Before you know it, you'll be stronger than I am.”
Jimmy laughed.
“Do you think I'm kidding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait and see. I believe you can learn to climb the pole.”
Jimmy wasn't sure. He looked across the yard at the pole that now looked more like a black toothpick than the backbone of a sturdy tree.
“No,” he began. But then an idea came to him. “If I learn how to climb the pole, could I work for the Georgia Power Company when I grow up?”
It was Grandpa's turn to pause. “I can't promise you a job, but you would be able to do something most other boys can't do. Can any of your friends climb a pole?”
“No, sir.”
“And just think about how much you'd enjoy being high in the air with a breeze blowing in your face.”
“Could I see the top of the church?”
“Yes, but you don't have to go higher than you want. You can take it easy at your own pace. We'll practice when you come over to visit me.”
“Will you be with me?”
“Always.”
Jimmy pressed his lips together in determination. “Okay.”
Grandpa sat down beside him. “Very good. First, I'll show you how to attach the climbing hooks to your boots.”
A
N HOUR LATER,
G
RANDPA SOAKED HIS FEET IN A HOT BASIN
of Epsom salts. Even though Jimmy didn't get more than six inches from the ground, the training session left the old man worn out. He let out a long sigh.
“Your grandma will be back in a minute. Let's keep your pole-climbing practice to ourselves,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Don't tell anyone what we're doing. That way it can be a surprise to everyone when you make it to the top.”
Jimmy was sitting on a low stool in the kitchen. Grandpa's white feet were bumpy and covered with blue veins.
“Can I ask Mama what she thinks?” Jimmy asked.
“No, we'll surprise her too. You can pretend it's like a Christmas present.”
Jimmy hesitated. “I tell Mama everything. She always knows what I'm going to give her for Christmas, and she tells me what to get Daddy.”
Grandpa wiggled his toes. “I know it's hard for you to keep quiet, but give me a chance to mention it to her first. Can you keep a secret until then?”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy replied slowly.
Grandma, fresh from her appointment at the beauty parlor, walked into the kitchen. Every gray hair was in place, and her head shone like silver.
“All tired out?” she asked Grandpa. “What did you boys do?”
“A little of this and that,” the old man replied quickly. “And it takes less of this and not much of that to wear me out.”
J
IMMY AND
B
USTER CROSSED THE INTERSECTION TWO BLOCKS
from home. The setting sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk. Jimmy was tired too. But it was a good tiredâthe kind of fatigue that felt satisfying. He reached the last stop sign before his street. When he looked to his left, he saw a police car. The officer rolled down his window.
It was Deputy Askew.
