South of Broad (13 page)

Finally, I heard Trevor ask his sister, “Is this it?”

“Close. Very close. I can’t be sure yet.”

“You’re right. We’ll have to see how it ends.”

“You could cut your foot on a broken beer bottle,” she said. “Develop a case of tetanus, then die. Worse than dying, no one knows you here. There wouldn’t be a soul at your funeral.”

“I want thousands at my funeral, Sheba. That is a
must.”

“No tetanus, then.” Sheba looked toward Sullivan’s Island and then back to the white chessboard of the city. The marsh held the deepest green of summer, the green of vestments, chameleons, or rain forests. The spartina grass threw off a bright, show-offy green that could change its aura when a cloud passed between the sun and the creek, invoking jade or olive oil in the ever-shifting light. Its green was infinite in the moment we found marshes alive in our newfound friendship.

“This could be it, Trevor,” Sheba said as we became part of the tide, the tube spinning in slow circles.

“What are you two talking about?” I asked. “No fair keeping secrets.”

Both twins laughed, then Sheba explained, “You don’t know us very well, Leo. And we don’t know you. Your mother doesn’t like us and she’ll break up whatever friendship we might’ve had. We’re too flamboyant for most people. We know that. And you’ve met our mother, a nut bag who gets knee-walking drunk.”

Her brother interrupted, “But it’s not all her fault. Our mom’s had a hard life. Sheba and I weren’t born in a rose garden, if you get my drift.”

“When we were little kids, Trevor and I decided to live a world of total make-believe. We got stuck with a bad script. Too much Dracula, not enough Disney.”

“You’re talking in code,” Trevor said to his sister. “As you’ve pointed out, Leo is one of God’s innocents, and I think we should let him remain so.”

“Might be a little too late for that,” Sheba said, winking at me and confirming my earlier intuition: that to Sheba, sex wasn’t ruled by notions of love and responsibility, and cast about with the shadow of the Stations of the Cross. To Sheba, sex was—and this was so bizarre that I could hardly fathom it—possibly a matter of
fun
. I was so astounded by the notion that I ducked my head underwater, where I thought even the fish might notice my blush.

When I rose to the air and the light, the particular magic of the tide’s flow, the slinking sunlight, the turquoise blue of the sky, and the magisterial silence of the marsh had put the twins in a prayerlike trance again. We did not have to move unless we came too near the shore or had to kick away from sandbars. We were tide-carried and tide-possessed.

Then Sheba said it again. “This is it. You’re right, Trevor. We’re in the middle of it, and it’s so nice to recognize it.”

“What’s it?” I cried out. “You keep talking about it, and I don’t know what in the hell either of you are talking about.”

Sheba said, “The perfect moment. Trevor and I have been looking for it our whole lives. We thought we had it before, but something always came along to ruin it.”

“Quiet,” Trevor remarked. “Don’t jinx it. This all could fall apart on us.”

“Last year we went out whale watching in Oregon. Our mother took us,” Sheba said. “We were just along for the ride, but then the whales started coming. The ocean seemed full of them. They were migrating north with their babies. Trevor and I looked at each other. We’d been so unhappy. But then we were in the front of the boat, just the two of us. We held hands and looked at each other, then back at the whales, and said, ‘This is it,’ at the same time.”

“That’s before our mother vomited. She said it was seasickness, but we knew it was bourbon,” Trevor said. “Needless to say, it did not turn out to be the perfect day. Didn’t even make the cut for the top ten.”

“Leo doesn’t need to hear this, Trevor,” Sheba said. “He’s had a perfect life. He’s so innocent.”

“Ah, you’re new in town,” I said. “Have you heard about my brother, Steve?”

“We thought you were an only child,” Trevor said.

“I am now. But let me tell you a little story. I had the nicest and best-looking brother in the world, and I thought the happiest. When I was nine, I found him in our bathtub after he’d slit his throat and wrists. I spent the next years talking to shrinks. I thought the sadness would kill me. It almost did. But I’m getting over it. Perfect life? I don’t think so, Sheba. And just so you know: I have zero friends my own age. Zero.”

Both twins reached over and touched me, Trevor grabbing my arm, and Sheba my hand.

“Two.” Sheba said it with emotion.

“You got two now,” Trevor said. “We can love you twice as well as anyone else because we’re twins.”

“Have you ever told another teenager about Steve?” Sheba asked.

“Not once,” I said. “But everyone in Charleston knows about it.”

Trevor said, “But we were the ones you chose to tell about it. It’s an honor, Leo.”

“A great honor,” Sheba agreed. “Let’s make room for Steve. Let’s invite him to float down the creek with us.”

She moved closer to me and so did Trevor. There was an empty space where my brother should have been.

“Steve,” I heard Sheba say. “Is that you, sweetheart?”

“Of course it’s him,” Trevor said. “How could he refuse an invitation to this party?”

“I don’t see him,” I said.

“You’ve got to feel him,” Sheba said, a patient instructor. “We’re going to teach you all about the pleasures of make-believe.”

“But you’ve got to believe in it too for us to make it real,” Trevor said. “Is it in you, Leo?”

“Then Steve knows it,” Sheba said quickly. “He’s the one who’s really nervous about this meeting. Speak to him.”

“Hey, Steve,” I said, my voice breaking. “God, I’ve missed you. No one ever needed a brother more than I did.”

Then I cracked like a pane of glass, and the twins broke with me. They cried to see me cry, as hard as I did. My tears mingled with the saltwater of the tides, until there were no more tears, and all the tides of sorrow had drained the marshes inside me dry. We floated in absolute silence for the next five minutes.

Then I said, “I ruined your perfect moment.”

“No, you didn’t,” Sheba said. “You added to it. You told us something true about yourself. That never happens.”

“You gave us a part of your self,” Trevor said. “Perfect doesn’t just mean happy. Perfect can have lots of different parts.”

“Do you know why I brought you to this dock today? Do you know why we’re floating toward Charleston Harbor right now?” I asked.

“No,” Sheba said. “Does Steve know this story? You’ve got to include him. We’ve taken you into our imaginary world, Leo. You’ve got to take it seriously.”

I looked over at the imaginary spot where my brother lived in the running-down exit of tides. “Steve, you’re going to love this story most of all.”

And I told the story of the summer my mother and father fell in love. The twins listened to the entire story without interrupting me once.

“Now, that’s a love story,” Trevor said, finally.

We came out of the creek into the slightly rougher waters of Charleston Harbor, still prisoners of a tide that grew in strength and power once we hit the waters of the Ashley River. The sun was beginning to set and the river turned citron-colored before it deepened into a full-bodied gold. Panic set in briefly when I did not see Father or any boat, then I spotted him waving. He had tied the Boston Whaler to a buoy and seemed to be fishing with great pleasure, probably in no hurry for us to float into the pickup zone. I think Father was so happy to see me spending time with kids my own age, he might have left us floating until midnight if not for the safety factor.

As the tides moved us swiftly toward the rendezvous with my father, I told the twins something I felt I had to tell them, in spite of my resolve to keep it to myself. The day had been so special that I worried about spoiling it, but I didn’t think I had much choice.

“Sheba, Trevor,” I said with great tentativeness, “I don’t know how to say this. I’ve never spent a more wonderful day than today. But just yesterday, a man attacked me. It was in an alleyway. That’s how I got this black eye. He put a knife to my throat. He said he would kill me and my parents. He saw us together, Sheba, and knew that you’d spent the night at my house. He wore a mask. He painted one of those things on my face, just like the one on your door. I’ve never been so scared.”

“You just ruined it, Leo,” Sheba said coldly. “Ruined the perfect day.”

“That’s it. Puff. Gone, just like that,” Trevor said, turning away from me.

“I didn’t mean to spoil anything,” I said. “I’m worried about you two.”

“We can take care of each other,” Sheba said. “Always have, always will.”

My father started the engine and moved out toward the center of the river to meet us. He threw out an anchor, idled the engine, and pulled us aboard one at a time. For several hours, we had floated in the saltwater, and now it felt good to dry ourselves with the beach towels and slake our thirst with the iced-down Coca-Cola Father had brought in the coolers.

“Your mother drove me out to the plantation. I picked up the car and the clothes you left behind,” Father said, as he handed us paper bags full of our summer clothes and flip-flops. In silence, Trevor and I pulled off our bathing trunks and pulled on shorts and T-shirts. I could not have been sorrier that I had mentioned the man in the alley. I thought I had lost the friendship of the twins forever by my indiscretion, though I could not imagine what my real crime consisted of or why they had both seemed so repulsed by the revelation.

From the marina, we crossed Lockwood Boulevard and turned up Sinkler Street, where all of us lived. My father was still delighted and managed to sustain a conversation with both the twins. We walked them to their house, where we could see their mother watching television in the front room. When I told Sheba good-bye, she surprised me by hugging me and kissing me on the cheek. “It was a perfect day. I’ll explain it to Trevor. But it could not have been better.”

As she shook my hand, she passed me a note. I hoped it was a love note or a love letter of any kind. I had read about love letters in novels, but never had received one. My father put his arm around my shoulder, and the gesture seemed timely and right. We took our good time, then walked into the house talking about what we’d prepare for dinner that night.

As soon as I was alone, I read the note that Sheba had slipped me in secret. It was not the love note I had hoped for, but its shock value was high.

“Dear Leo, sorry about the way Trevor and I acted just now. We knew the man who attacked you. He is the reason we’ve made up an imaginary life together. The man who hurt you was our father. Yes, Leo. You met our dear old dad.”

CHAPTER 7
Party Time

O
n the Fourth of July, I gave a party to celebrate the end of my probation. All morning, my father and I set up card tables and folding chairs we had commandeered from the high school. Mother decorated each table with a vase of multicolored flowers from her garden. Father had stayed up all night barbecuing a small hog, and he had spent the hours of darkness cursing both the neighborhood raccoons and the untethered dogs driven mad by the aroma of hickory-infused pork. Sheba and Trevor came over in the morning and spent the whole day making themselves useful: they polished the silverware and laid down tablecloths and set immaculate tables all over the backyard, heeding my mother’s ironclad order that there would be no plastic knives or forks or paper plates at any social function at her house.

When Coach Jefferson and his family arrived just after one in the afternoon, he and Father began setting up a makeshift bar. It surprised me that it was going to be a full bar, ranging from the plebian to the exotic, from iced-down beer to Singapore Slings. Mrs. Jefferson and her mother brought huge containers of lemonade and iced tea. Ike and I were sent off to the ice house to buy enough ice to sink an aircraft carrier, according to Father’s orders. I took my ‘57 Chevy and we headed out toward North Charleston on I-26.

We lucked out with the weather. July Fourth in Charleston was capable of being hot enough to blister the paint off moving vehicles, but the day was overcast and the breeze a cool one. Though nervous, I also felt a lightness I had not experienced in years, an exhilaration of spirit nearing floodwater marks. I was trying to gain small glimpses of myself that might help me know anything about the man I was in the process of becoming.

Ike broke my spell by asking, “Why do you have the top down in this car, white fool?”

“Because it is summertime, black dimwit. And the summertime is when it’s most fun to ride in a convertible.”

“What do you think it looks like to a white cop or a redneck seeing a white boy and a brother riding down the highway like they own the world?”

“It’ll do ’em some good. Ike, shut up and enjoy the ride.”

He adjusted his side-view mirror. “It’ll be my black ass swinging from some rope. From an oak tree.”

“If there’s a choice, I sure hope they hang you and not me.”

“They may hang both of us. You don’t know the cracker mind like I do.”

“Oh, really? Who you work for, cracker expert, Mr. Soda, Mr. Ritz, or Mr. Graham? Every time we get together, Ike, every time, you’ve got to turn it into a sociology class. We’re going out to buy some ice. It feels like I picked up H. Rap Brown or Stokely Carmichael hitchhiking along I-26.”

“Staying aware is staying alive,” Ike said.

“Let me put you in the trunk.”

“I like it fine up here. You just need to think about things a little more.”

“That’s why I made friends with a sharp guy like you.”

“You thought about your guest list to this party, white boy?” Ike asked. “You got black people and white people coming to the same party, you dumb-ass son of a bitch.”

“One black girl I want you to meet,” I told him. “She’s from the orphanage.”

“The last thing I want to do is meet an orphan.”

“You’ll like meeting this one. She’s awfully pretty.”

“How you know everything in the world?”

“Cracker-boy just knows.” Then I looked into my rearview mirror and started. “Uh-oh, Ike. Coming up on my left. Pickup truck full of rednecks. Oh, God, they’ve got shotguns and they’re aiming them. Get down! Quick—get down!”

Ike threw himself to the floorboards. We rode on for thirty seconds then Ike asked, “They gone yet?”

“I made a mistake. They were kindergarten kids eating snow cones. False alarm.”

“You lying white Strom Thurmond son of a bitch!” he said as I pulled the car off a ramp onto Remount Road and drove to a newly opened ice house owned by a man my father once taught. I had rankled Ike with my hoax and was feeling bad about it, but he finally broke a stony silence and said, “You tell any of these white folks today that you invited black folks to your getting-out-of-the-loony-bin party?”

“This party has nothing to do with the loony bin. This is to celebrate my coming off probation.”

“You sure have led a good life. First, a lunatic, then a drug dealer. How did you manage all that?”

“I just caught all the breaks, Ike. Just like getting to know you. No, if the white people get upset at blacks being at the party, they can leave.”

“Something wrong in your head, white boy.”

I answered, “But I believe in the power of prayer. Oh Lord, have me wake up tomorrow thinking just like that wonderful, perfect black hero, Dr. George Washington Carver Ike Jefferson Goddamn Forward-Looking Junior.”

“I’ll be lucky if you don’t get me killed this year,” he mumbled, grimacing as I pulled the car onto the loading ramp of the ice house.

When Ike and I drove up with both the backseat and the trunk filled with ice, the orphanage school bus was turning the corner on tires as shiny as licorice, with Mr. Lafayette at the wheel. I saw that Sister Polycarp had dressed the orphans in orange jumpsuits with the words “St. Jude’s Orphanage” printed on both the front and back of the uniform.

“Hey, Mr. Lafayette, why did Pollywog make them dress this way? Didn’t you explain this was a party?” I asked.

“Sister Pollywog doesn’t countenance well to advice, Leo,” he replied with a snort.

As I made the introductions all around, I could read the humiliation of the three orphans in a form of secret graffiti around their eyes. “Betty Roberts,” I said to the new girl I’d met the other day, “here’s the guy I told you about, Ike Jefferson. I met him when I was in the state mental hospital.”

“He did not,” Ike said as he shook Betty’s hand. “Though I think they made a bad mistake letting this boy out so soon.”

There was the nervous laughter of teenagers as I turned to Sheba Poe and asked, “Sheba, you got any extra clothes that Starla and Betty could wear to this party?”

“Follow me, girls, and I’ll fix you right up,” Sheba said, and I could tell she knew exactly what it was I wanted. She took Starla and Betty by the elbows and led them in the direction of her house. “I know some makeup secrets you girls are going to love.”

I said, “C’mon, Niles. You’re now going to select something to wear from a real clotheshorse’s closet. Naturally, I’m referring to me.”

I dressed Niles in a new pair of Bermuda shorts, an old pair of Docksiders, and a Citadel T-shirt, of which I owned about twenty because of my Father’s oxlike affection for his alma mater plus his painful neediness to see me follow in his footsteps.

“You look good, Niles.” I folded his uniform and placed it on my dresser.

“Why do you have two beds in your room?” Ike asked as he conducted a brief survey of my bedroom.

“I used to have a brother, but he died.”

“How’d he die?”

“He killed himself.”

“Why?”

“Never got to ask him,” I said. “Let’s go to the party.”

Niles asked, “Was he anything like you?”

“No, Steve was just a great guy,” I answered. “Nothing like me.”

We heard piano music coming from the living room, where I was surprised to find my mother and Trevor Poe performing a duet. Immediately, I could see that my mother’s skills as a pianist were overmatched by the far more accomplished Trevor. He had long, perfectly manicured fingernails and beautifully shaped hands. My mother soon held up her own hands in a gesture of surrender. “I give up, Trevor. You didn’t tell me you were a prodigy.”

“It’s a God-given gift,” Trevor said. “Wait until you hear Sheba sing along with me.”

“She’s a singer?” my mother asked.

“Dr. King, you don’t know it yet, but you will: Sheba Poe is a star.”

“Do you play classical music?” my mother asked. When she had abandoned her duet, Trevor had begun to play “Hey Jude” by the Beatles. But when my mother mentioned classical, he transitioned to a piano arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his hands flashing with astonishing grace over the keyboard.

“Once I hear a song—just once—I can play it for the rest of my life,” he explained.

“You ever play any football?” Ike asked him.

“How grotesque! What would be your guess?”

The girls returned from the Poes’ house across the street, where Sheba had transformed Starla and Betty by applying makeup with a light but expert touch. Both wore sundresses and sandals, and Sheba had even figured out how to disguise Starla’s unfortunate strabismus by fitting her with a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses. Starla was a pretty, happy young woman now, and she came up to thank me for giving her up to Sheba.

“You and Betty look like you’re ready to party. Great job, Sheba. Some party music, Trevor,” I shouted, and Trevor began blasting away at “Rock Around the Clock.” My party for myself officially began.

In the small, insular world I had created for myself in Charleston, I had invited everyone who had played a significant role in my long struggle to get back to myself. I had experienced a lostness so profound that it seemed like a rain forest, impenetrable and inhospitable, had grown up around me one day; in that dispiriting forest, I had found no relief. But now I planned to leave its alien geography far behind me, and I could feel a child’s pleasure every time the doorbell rang and I welcomed Monsignor Max, or Cleo and her husband, or Eugene Haverford, who brought me an afternoon paper. Judge William Alexander and his wife, Zan, came; it delighted me that they brought my shrink, Jacqueline Criddle. Harrington Canon walked up the sidewalk, then came Henry Berlin with his wife and his two oldest kids; I introduced them to Chad and Fraser Rutledge and Molly Huger, who came in right behind them.

“I’d go out of business without the Rutledge family business. And the Huger family is just icing on the cake,” Henry Berlin said. “So this is where my favorite jailbird lives!”

“Quiet, Henry,” Mrs. Berlin said, but Henry winked at me.

“I tried to get a date for Fraser,” Chad said, “but not much luck there.”

“It’s great to see you again, Leo,” Molly said as we shook hands.

“Hey, Fraser,” I said. “There’s a guy I want you to meet. Come with me.”

I took her by the hand, led her through the crowd in the backyard, and walked her over to a table where Ike and Betty were chatting with Niles and Starla.

“Hey, Niles,” I said. “This is a friend of mine, Fraser Rutledge, and I thought you two might enjoy each other. Niles Whitehead.”

“You seem to be quite the matchmaker, Leo,” Starla said.

“I don’t know, I’ve never done it before.”

“Who you going to match me with?” she asked.

I looked around the yard and didn’t see an obvious candidate, but my eyes came to rest on Trevor Poe.

“Hey, Trevor. Will you play some love songs for my friend Starla?” I asked.

Trevor said, “I find that prospect divine.” He took Starla back into the house, then the prettiest music in the world started pouring out of our living room window into the backyard as the tide rose toward us, moon-summoned and spiced with summer.

Walking over to a table where Harrington Canon sat in solitude, I asked, “Want me to get you another drink, Mr. Canon, or refresh the one you have?”

“Sit with me for a second, Leo,” he said. “I have some statements to make to you. Some are general, some provocative.”

“Sounds like the Harrington Canon I know and love,” I said, pulling a chair up beside him.

“Your parents don’t own a single item of interest,” he said. “I’ve never seen such an awkward display of tastelessness.”

“They have simple tastes. Plus, they’re teachers,” I explained. “They couldn’t afford much in your store. You even say that
you
can’t afford to buy anything in your store.”

“There are people of color here,” he said, looking off toward the Ashley River.

“Yes, I invited them,” I said. “They’re friends of mine.”

“I think it is disgraceful to bring colored and white people together for a party. I wouldn’t have the first idea of what to say to any of them.”

“You aren’t talking to anyone, white or black. You’re sitting by yourself staring at nothing.”

“I’m admiring a river,” he said. “God’s handiwork at its most superior.”

“You’re being a teensy bit antisocial,” I said.

“A convicted felon, calling me antisocial. I’ve never heard of such raw presumption.”

I made my way across the backyard and greeted some of my favorite customers who stood in line at the barbecue pit. As I made my way toward Judge Alexander’s table, my mother called to me from the far side of the yard, where I saw her hugging Septima Clark and her daughter. Septima had been a civil rights leader in Charleston for decades. It was a brave act to invite Septima Clark to any function in Charleston, but it was unheard-of for a white family to invite her to a purely social occasion. I felt a shiver of pride as I saw Septima and my mother embrace. I thought that one could entertain doubts about the personas my parents presented to society, but no one could doubt their courage. Monsignor Max rose and led Septima across the yard to eat dinner with him at his table.

But the spirit did not pollinate everyone in equal doses. I noticed that Niles and Fraser, Ike and Betty, and Starla Whitehead were on the fringes of Judge Alexander’s group, laughing out loud at the stories he offered up in the late-afternoon air. Chad Rutledge broke away from Molly when he saw me retracing my steps back toward the judge’s table. He got a firm grasp on my arm and led me toward the edge of the lake where we were all but hidden from view behind a water oak.

“What do you think you’re doing, King?” Chad said.

“What’re you talking about, Chad?”

“The niggers. You’ve invited niggers to your party! Are you and your parents nuts?”

“Why don’t you go ask my mother and father if they’re nuts, Chad, old pal?” I said. “I’d love to see their reaction.”

“This is Charleston, son,” he informed me.

“Thanks for the news flash.”

“We don’t do things like that here. We’re too smart for that.”