Seeing Red (13 page)

The shop door jiggled and light came in from outside. I lifted my head and saw Rosie marching across the shop floor towards me and up the stairs, her Dr Scholl’s sandals clomping and her bangle bracelets clacking.

She stopped by the desk and looked down at me. “Darrell told me what happened. Why would you do that, Red?”

“I don’t know. I-I didn’t really know what was happening until it was too late.”

Her hands were on her hips now. “You didn’t know you were burning a cross?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t mean, you know, what it really means to burn a cross. And I didn’t know Thomas was there. I never would’ve done it if I’d known Thomas was right there!”

Rosie didn’t say anything, which almost made it worse. It made my excuse sound stupid. I knew it wasn’t okay to do something like that, even if no black person actually saw you do it. The Brotherhood was there. And it made it look like I was one of them. And Thomas saw me.

She shook her head like when Mama was annoyed with us. “I don’t understand.”

“Me, neither,” I muttered.

“I know those boys,” she said. “Some of them are real nice. I can’t see them doing that.”

She looked away and I stared at her so hard my eyes stung because I was waiting for her to say that I was one of those boys who was real nice. But she never did. She just shook her head again, clomped down the steps, and walked out the door. The slapping of her Dr Scholl’s had never sounded so hollow.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

School

I had to mail Thomas’s letter to Washington, DC, because he left Stony Gap the day after “the incident”, as Mama called it. I told him that I hadn’t known what kind of group the Brotherhood was or what they were going to do. I told him I was just trying to stop Mama from selling and that’s why I was stupid enough to follow Darrell and burn a cross, even though I should’ve known better. And I told him I was sorry. I said he was the best friend I ever had and I wished it hadn’t ended this way. And that I hoped, maybe, some day, we could be friends again. I wasn’t sure that last part would ever happen, but I still wanted to say it because I meant it.

I thought about Thomas a lot, and not just because Mama told me to. I couldn’t help it. I listened to both the albums he’d given me: James Brown’s
Say It Loud
–
I’m Black and I’m Proud
and Edwin Starr’s
War & Peace.
I pushed the buttons on our Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots, but it wasn’t the kind of game you could play real well by yourself. Even when I got one robot to knock the other’s block off, it didn’t feel like much of a victory. I still didn’t want J to play it, though, or he’d probably bust it, and Rosie refused to do any kind of fighting game, including fake fighting like this one. Even trying to get her to play G.I. Joe had never worked. She always brought Barbie over to lecture me and G.I. Joe about making peace not war.

Making peace not war is easier than it sounds. I tried to figure out how everything had happened up on the mountain behind Kenny’s and what I could’ve done about it. It had all gone so fast yet slow at the same time, like being in that accident with the Plymouth Belvedere before we got the Chevy. We were driving home from a church supper and it was dark and raining. An eighteen-wheeler was coming down the mountain towards us, and Daddy had just said a truck that size had no business being on a little country road when the truck skidded and crossed into our lane. I remember seeing those huge headlights coming straight for us and hearing Mama scream, “Frank!” and Daddy swear, and even though we were in that ditch in seconds, it also felt like it went on for ever, because I remember thinking, “Oh, man, we’re going to crash,” and “If my legs get broken I won’t be able to ride my new bike,” and “Should I wake up J, or is it better for him to sleep through this?” It was weird to have enough time to sit there pondering the terrible thing that was about to happen, feeling like you were trapped because it was going to happen anyway. That’s what it felt like on the mountain behind Kenny’s, only worse.

When school started, I didn’t even care because I figured it’d take my mind off things. J was real excited to get on the bus and pushed ahead of me to make sure he was first. I climbed up the rubber-treaded steps and was hit by the smell of the Pine-Sol cleaner the bus driver always used. I turned into the rows of faces and remembered how long it had been since I’d seen all these kids. They seemed to remember, too, because some of them quit talking and most of them stared at me. Or maybe they’d heard about what happened on the mountain behind Kenny’s. Only Lou Anne Atkins said hey. I mumbled a hey back and slid into an empty seat, putting my lunch bag beside me, hoping no one would sit there. I looked through the scratched-up window at the disappearing shop as the bus pulled away.

I didn’t want to look at the kids because they reminded me of when Daddy died. A lot of them came to the funeral, and their mamas and daddies told them they had to be nice to me. They called me up or even stopped by for the first couple of weeks, but seems after that they felt like I should’ve gotten over it, sort of like I had a bad case of the flu. The thing is, when you get over the flu, everything goes back to normal. When your daddy dies, nothing is ever going to be normal again. Riding on the bus felt familiar and strange at the same time, like being in school and finding a substitute teacher. The classroom might be the same but it felt different, like you were in the wrong place.

I felt like I was in the wrong place in Miss Miller’s class, too. Sure, she was pretty, like that actress Mary Tyler Moore on Mama’s favourite TV show. She had bouncy brown hair that flipped up at her shoulders, big green eyes, and a happy smile, but that was just the fake outside. Inside she was a teacher like any other. She might’ve had a peace-symbol necklace and a flower-power book bag, but her speech about working hard was just like a regular teacher.

“This year is going to be full of new and exciting challenges! We’re going to learn how to question and how to think. We’re going to work hard to find our place in this world.”

It’s always dangerous when a teacher says “we”. “We are going to work hard” really means, “You are going to work hard, and I’m going to mark it all up with my big red pen.”

Miss Miller told us we’d learn all about history, and recent history. She wanted us to watch the news or read the paper every day. She called it “living history”.

I groaned and slumped down in my desk. Every teacher has a pet subject she loves so much she can’t shut up about it. With Miss Miller, just my luck, it was history. How could people get so excited about history? It was all old and gone and you couldn’t do anything about it, anyway, so what was the point?

“Young man, what’s your name?”

I didn’t realize Miss Miller was talking to me until I heard the giggling and then Bobby Benson say, “That’s Red Porter, ma’am. He’s a little touched in the head.” Then he whispered, “He talks to dead people, retards, and Negroes!”

I sat up fast and glared at Bobby.

“Red, are you not feeling well today?”

Everyone was staring at me. Some kids were snickering. I was getting nervous and didn’t want to stare right in Miss Miller’s eyes, so I looked at the blackboard behind her. She’d written in blue chalk:
The truth will set you free.

It was like a sign. I decided to tell the truth. “I’m fine, ma’am. I just don’t like history.”

Everyone’s eyes got bigger, even Miss Miller’s. And there was no more snickering, either.

Miss Miller folded her arms and all eyes were on her. She said, in kind of a friendly way, “I love history. Why is it that you don’t like it?”

All eyes were on me again. “Well…because…who cares?”

There were a few gasps from around the room as everyone looked back at Miss Miller. I thought maybe I’d gone too far, so I tried to make up for it a little. “I mean, it’s all happened already and there’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s kind of a waste of time.” There were more gasps, and I realized that I’d probably made things worse, so I added, “Isn’t it?”

Miss Miller sucked in her lips till they were all gone. She stared at me and there was no happiness in her eyes any more. I slid down in my seat some more as she started pacing back and forth in front of the room. All you could hear were her high heels clicking on the linoleum.

Finally she stopped. “Red, let me ask you something.”

I swallowed.

“Have you ever made a mistake?”

I wondered if she’d heard about the Thomas incident. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you ever learned from any of those mistakes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘history repeats itself’?”

“I don’t think so.” I had no idea where she was going with this.

“If we don’t learn what has happened in the past, do you think we might make the same mistakes again?”

I hated those kinds of questions. I never knew if the teacher wanted a yes or a no. I tried to hedge my bets. “If you say so.”

There were a couple of gasps and oohs, and Miss Miller stared at me, her eyes narrowing.

I guess it sounded like sassing, but I hadn’t meant it that way. She decided I could stay in at recess and help the janitor “pack up some history” in the boxes he was shipping to the county office building and maybe I could “learn a little something”. As if that weren’t enough, she made me switch desks with Emma Jean so I was at the head of the middle row, right in front of Miss Miller’s desk. I don’t know which one of us was more upset, me or Emma Jean, who had claimed a front centre seat ever since first grade.

It was dark in the school basement, and it smelled of bleach. The janitor got up from a desk in the corner where he was eating a sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. “Can I help you?”

“Miss Miller says I need to help clean up.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I see.” He handed me a broom. “What else did Miss Miller say?”

I looked around the basement. “She says I might learn a little history of this place.”

“Well, I’ve been coming here for close to forty years.” He picked up a box and stacked it on top of another one.

“You mean, you went to school here?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t go to this school. I went down the road a piece.”

There was a shack overgrown with vines that folks called the “rows in wall” school, which always made me think of rows of desks attached to the walls, where black kids used to go. It was falling apart now. “The rows-in-wall school?”

“It’s Ros-en-wald. He’s the man who put up the seed money to build the school and we matched it.”

“Why’d he make you build your own school?”

“He didn’t make us. It was a gift. Got a lot better schools that way than what the county would give us.”

“But you wouldn’t have had to pay for it.”

“Oh, we were paying for it—” He gave his head a little shake. “Where are my manners? I’m Philip Walter.” He held his hand out and gave a little bow.

I shook his hand. “I’m Red Porter, sir.” Daddy said we had to say sir or ma’am to grown-ups, even if they were black.

Mr Walter smiled. “I know.” His smile faded as he said, “I was surprised you were involved in that…event with young Thomas. I thought you boys were friends.”

I felt my face going red. “We were – we are.” I looked at my feet. “We were.”

“You don’t want to be hanging out with those boys, son.”

“I know. I— It was really dumb.” I couldn’t look at him because what if he knew the part about me burning the cross? Thomas hadn’t told the sheriff, but maybe he’d told others.

“I heard you got roughed up by those boys pretty good yourself, so I suspect you learned something.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“Well, we all make stupid mistakes, especially when we’re young. As a matter of fact,” he said, his voice sounding less serious, “I seem to recall your daddy being in the same position you are right now.”

I looked up. “You knew my daddy?”

“I told you, I been here a long time.”

“What’d he do?”

“Got in a fight with another boy.”

I thought about that for maybe two seconds. “Mr Dunlop?”

He chuckled. “Yup, Baby Ray.”

“Baby Ray? Is that what they called him?”

“Now don’t you go repeating that.”

“I won’t. So was he a crybaby?”

Mr Walter’s eyes widened. “He was a bully, but he turned into a crybaby as soon as any teacher was around. I think we were all ready for that boy to be laid out. It was hard for me to have to carry out any punishment on your daddy.”

“What’d you make him do?”

He tilted his head towards the corner where his desk was. “Sat him right over there and made him keep me company while we ate MoonPies.”

I guess he saw the look on my face.

“Well, my wife had packed me two and I didn’t see why I should have to suffer through both of them.” He winked at me.

The rest of the time I was sweeping and then helping Mr Walter stack boxes of files, I kept looking at the corner, picturing Daddy at my age eating a MoonPie while he laughed with Mr Walter. It made me want to laugh, too, except that I couldn’t help thinking of the difference between us. He’d gotten in trouble for fighting a Dunlop. I’d gone off with a Dunlop and acted as nasty as they were.