Slow Way Home (22 page)

But by the time the words had found their way to the edge of the road, I was already too far ahead to turn back.

I rode along the path of the river. It snaked the corners of yards lined with plastic swimming pools and fishing boats. Pink flamingos, the type that Mama Rose sold in the spring collection, dotted the edge of the principal’s house. Streamers of moss dangled from the branches of the oak trees as if even nature itself was celebrating Hoyt Franklin’s arrival.

When I first approached town, it looked empty except for a hound. Her tits dangled inches above the sidewalk, and she wagged her tail as I drove by. The dime-store window was draped red, white, and blue.

It was not because of the motor home that I braked. I did not see it until the crowd moved to the side. It was Beau that caused me to break.

He was laughing and throwing his head back like he really thought he was the king of the town. For a second I thought of pedaling faster and faster until my bicycle flag fluttered in a caution-light red. I pictured Beau hitting my handlebars and landing flat on the ground. As I edged closer, Beau saw me and waved before he could help it.

The top of Hoyt Franklin’s safari hat was set high above the group.

His deep voice and smooth tones were even more defined than they were through the TV speaker. “And that’s when I knew that it was time to stay put in New York for a while. The streets of Manhattan were nothing compared to Marge Wheeler of Ridgeport, Michigan, and her twelve gauge.”

Without laugh tracks, the crowd roared to life again. “I don’t see how you keep all those names straight,” the man who owned the dime store said.

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“Good work if you can get it. And so, that leads me to the end of the road, ladies and gentlemen.” Hoyt held up his hand even before the crowd moaned in disappointment. “All good things must end. So with that, I would like to get one last shot of this famous police station. The smallest in America, you say?”

“You won’t find any tinier,” the mayor called out.

Hoyt nodded, and the man with long sideburns inched backwards with the camera still strapped on his shoulder.

The camera made a clicking sound. The sound of a snake that is tired of being tricked. Edging away to the side of the phone booth, Hoyt Franklin looked right at me. “Hello again. Say, why don’t you and the other boys get behind me with your bikes.”

Beau almost tipped his bike over trying to line himself up with the camera. Hoyt propped his arm against the telephone booth, right next to the words “Police Station.”

Clicking rang in my ear. It was as if a bomb had been tucked inside the lens and at any moment would explode without warning.

Beau licked his hand and ran it down the front of his hair.

Through the corner of my eye, I saw Hoyt Franklin looking down at me. The piercing stare was more polished than his words.

Watching the moves of the small black lens, I edged to the far side of the group. Two boys pressed against Beau as if they were his girlfriends. But the clicking sound of the camera . . . tick, tick, tick . . .

kept me playing hard to get.

“What is a community? Flesh and blood who come together to share experiences for a lifetime. Blacks and whites who share hard times as well as the good. Towns tucked away in the hidden parts of this country. These boys know community. And what they witnessed in Abbeville, Florida, today will be that of stories passed down for generations. Of flesh and blood. One white and the other black coming together to make a community that refused to give in to hate.”

When Hoyt stepped aside, the cameraman got down on one knee as if he might propose to the phone booth. He slowly slid the camera towards the group. My heart beat as fast as the tick of his machine.

Leaning away, I tried to lift my bike and make a run for it.

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I heard the elastic rip in my shirt collar and then felt the material sag. A force was yanking me into the darkness of the lens. Beau was giggling as he looked into the camera and pulled my shirt all at the same time.

I kicked at his bike, but the only thing I hit was a cracked Coke bottle. Tick, tick, tick. The man’s shoulder swung towards me and suddenly the darkness was peering right at me. My reflection in the glass was nothing but wide-eyed wonder. It did not show the dryness of my throat or the thumping in my chest. Tick, tick, tick. Little did I know how far that black hole would reach.

Thirteen

T
he day of the Fourth of July celebration I awoke to the sound of aluminum wrap being folded into submission.

Nana was pinned in the camper kitchen carefully wrapping the cupcakes she had made to sell at the booth for God’s Hospital. A dim light the size of a pencil flashlight shone down on her, and even in the darkness I could make out her arm twitching.

She never even saw me slide down from the bunk bed and step towards her. Her robe with tiny purple flowers moved around the cramped space as if a hurricane had swept up a batch of wildflowers from a distant field. Her brow was deep with wrinkles once again.

Soon she’d tear open a packet of BC powder and reach for a cup of water. It was a ritual I had seen played out every day of the past month. Worry left scars of white powdery medicine clinging to her lips like milk rings.

Before she could reach over and open the refrigerator door, I wrapped my arms around her waist. Her stomach molded into my touch as if it were stuffed with feathers.

Her flinch did not tear me away from trying to settle the storm that boiled inside of her. “I didn’t hear you get up,” she whispered.

For a second we just stood there against the music of Poppy’s steady snore from the back of the camper. Her familiar smell of fresh soap and summer rain filled my head until I no longer cared if I was
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too old to be holding on to her this way. She squeezed my hands in a type of coded language that only I could understand. It’s going to be fine. I’m just going to have to work through this concern about Cecil.

There’s no use worrying over it anymore. And with a pat she let go.

Later at the town celebration, the “Street Closed” sign stood directly in front of Main Street. A dunking booth built by 4-H members and card tables representing every good cause in town lined the sidewalks. The singing cowboys harmonized about Beulah Land down by the river, as citizens armed with candied apples meandered through the street like misguided ants. At the other end of the street grills were hitched to the backs of two trucks and chicken-flavored smoke cut into the air. A deputy stood guard over the police station. The afternoon sun cut flecks of gold through his hair as he took one last drag on a cigarette before pressing it out against the phone-booth door.

Poppy stood nearby with his hands tucked inside pockets and watched as Harvey lifted the gigantic grill cover. Harvey twirled the skewer stick as if he were a majorette, and soon flames shot up until the chicken pieces sizzled. With his new crutches, Josh barreled up right next to Harvey.

“Josh, is your mama and them coming?” Poppy asked.

Josh simply pointed a crutch at the truck behind us. Beau and Bonita had gathered lawn chairs out of the back and were trying to maneuver through the automobiles that lined the side streets.

“Hey, lady. Let us help you out,” Poppy said.

Bonita tried to laugh and grab an ice cooler that was slipping away from her. “Lord, please!”

Beau nervously looked at me and then back towards the crowd. I reached for one of the chairs, only to see him jerk it away.

“Is Parker coming?” Poppy asked.

“No. He had to work.” Bonita’s red hair shook with the compli-cated details. “Lord, I can’t keep his schedule straight.”

Bonita stopped in front of the drugstore and talked to two ladies selling leather bracelets with stamped names. But Beau trudged ahead with the chairs, making his way to the worst cause in town. Even 158

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though I couldn’t make out the words from the distance, I could see Mama Rose’s beaklike mouth moving as fast as a bird warning a hawk to keep away. She chose a red wig for the celebration and even had a sparkly American flag pinned to her rabbit coat. Just looking at the clump of brown fur that was wilted flat by the hammering sun caused a trickle of sweat to tickle my ear. I was just about to turn in the other direction when I was jolted by the touch of ice against my neck.

Alvin was holding three bottles with slivers of ice melting down the sides. “You want a cold one? I got a mess in the back of my truck.”

The baggy sockets his eyes rested in were as ugly as pure sin. Instead, I looked down at the threads of torn jeans that tried to hide his military boots.

A woman with legs mapped with blue veins blocked me from being able to warn Sister Delores to move her stand down the street.

She had enough problems without having to sell baked goods that Alvin might slip over and pepper with poison.

“Hey, baby. You looking for your grandma? She went down there for a drink.”

I followed Sister Delores’s point, and saw Nana standing at the soft-drink trailer. The concern that had trapped me when I first saw Alvin faded into relief. She was smiling and shaking her head to something Mrs. Rockingham, the head clerk at the Piggly Wiggly, was saying. Nana laughed right out loud and patted the back of her hair.

Through the smoke that was drifting from the cooker I could not recall how long the virtuous braid had been. The nestlike clump of hair that had rested on the dining-room floor from days past was now nothing more than a skin she had shed in North Carolina.

A piece of paper broke my stare. “Here, Sister Delores.” Josh was waving a piece of Mama Rose’s construction paper in the air.

“What’s this here?” Sister Delores held the paper as if it was laced with poison ink, and I tried to confirm the suspicion with a wink.

“It’s my autograph. Mama Rose is selling them for a dime apiece, but you can have one free. Seeing as how you got me on the news and everything.”

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Sister Delores rolled her eyes and laughed that deep-gutted howl.

“Now, here you go acting all grown like that brother of yours.”

While Sister Delores clutched the paper to her chest and smiled as if Josh had delivered a million dollars, Alvin glared from across the street. Mama Rose was holding up a flag paperweight and shaking it right in front of his face, but he never looked away. The longer he watched us, the smaller his eyes seemed to become. He hadn’t made it past the stage before Beau caught up with him and together they headed towards the parking lot.

By the time the high school band began to play “America the Beautiful,” I had already made it down the street twice. Standing on the edge of the gazebo down by the river, I surveyed the people below. A sea of heads connected the river and the town. It was only when I looked out over the parking lot that I began to sense something was not right within the family.

Parker’s brown hat stood high above the others. The gold letters FHP reflected in the sun, and two other policemen walked alongside of him. They glided through the crowd and stood in front of Sister Delores’s stand. The policeman who had been leaning against the telephone booth was now talking into a walkie-talkie. A patrol car and a white sedan pulled up at the edge of the street closest to me. Two men dressed in uniform and a white-haired woman got out. They forked their way through into the crowd just as a policeman got up on stage.

Alvin. They finally figured out it was him who burned the church. I leaped from the railing and didn’t even feel the shock of hitting the ground. Running through the crowd, I only slowed down when my arm was caught by a wayward purse strap. By the time I got to the edge of Sister Delores’s table, her mouth was gaped open.

“I wanted to tell you, Sister Delores, but he’d cut my tongue out.

See, we saw the crosses in his shed that day.”

She leaned against the table and never even noticed when a stack of wrapped brownies fell to the sidewalk. “Baby, you just stay here with me till this mess gets through with.” Folds of her sticky underarm were like quicksand, keeping me from pulling away.

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Parker’s gun never was drawn. It was still locked on his hip as always. The crowd began to stare as Parker walked towards Mama Rose’s stand. She saluted and said, “God bless America and the road patrol that keeps this place decent.” But Parker and the two men had a mission greater than a town simpleton. Drifting through the groups and past the parking lot where Alvin had slipped away, Parker kept his head held high. I pulled away wanting to tell Parker that Alvin had probably made it back to his home in the place called hell.

“Shh, now. Just stay right here with me,” Sister Delores whispered.

Bonita jogged up to Parker, but his face never broke from the stone mask. As the crowd moved to follow Parker, Bonita ran back across the street to us.

“What in the world is going on around here?”

By the time Parker and the men reached the trailer that sold drinks, Nana was already chewing the ice from her cup. The two men that followed him stopped a distance away. When he touched her shoulder, pieces of ice scattered across the sidewalk.

Parker led her by the elbow as if she might be twenty years older and in need help crossing the street. By the time they had made it to the stand for God’s Hospital, she was biting her lip. “See after my boy.”

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not yet. Don’t cry, I screamed inside my head. You cry, and they’ll all see you. The tiny lens of the camera that Hoyt Franklin had brought to town could not have captured the details any better than my mind.

The woman with white streaks in her hair touched my arm and squatted down in front of me. “Hey, buddy. We’re going to take you back to North Carolina now. This is all over, and your mom is waiting for you.” Her words were slow and loud, the way a person might talk to the deaf.

The taste of waste filled my throat. Resisting the urge to punch the woman right on her crooked nose, I yelled as loud as I could. “I want to see them.”