South of Broad (37 page)

I heard Molly laughing at the other end of the phone. “Do you always answer the phone like that?”

“No,” I said, “sometimes I say, ‘This is Leo King and you can kiss my ass, whoever you are.’ Of course, I always answer like that. You know my mother now. This house has ten thousand rules.”

Then fiery words broke out between Molly and her mother. Because Molly’s hand covered the receiver, I could not make out the words, but there was genuine fury in the muffled exchange. Finally, Molly said, “Mama, I think I deserve a little privacy. Thank you very much. Leo, are you still there?”

“Still here,” I said. “Anything wrong?”

“Yeah, there’s a lot wrong,” Molly said. “Chad and I had a fight, and he broke up with me today. In fact, just a few minutes ago.”

“What an idiot,” I said. “Is he nuts?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because you’re you,” I said, flustered. “You’re everything in the world.”

“I was hoping you’d say something like that,” Molly said. “That was one of the reasons I called.”

“What was the other?”

“To ask if you could take me to the dance after the game Friday night.”

I blushed so deeply and suddenly that I thought my face might have a crimson hue for the rest of my life. I hunted for words but muteness had turned my tongue to stone. I prayed for an electrical storm to bring down the phone lines of the city. In wordless shame, I awaited Molly’s intercession.

“Leo? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” I said, grateful that my voice had returned to the stage.

“Well, what’s the answer?” she asked. “Will you take me to the dance or not?”

“Molly, you’re Chad’s girlfriend. I know how much he thinks about you. I know how proud you make him.”

“Is that why he asked Bettina Trask to the dance?” she said. “Is that why he asked that big-titted tramp to the sock hop?”

“Bettina Trask,” I gasped, stunned at the news. “Does Chad have a death wish? She’s Wormy Ledbetter’s girlfriend. That’s like committing suicide.”

“I hope Wormy beats the snot out of him.”

“We can plan Chad’s funeral if you like. I know how this story is going to end.”

“I don’t want to talk about Chad. Will you take me to the dance or not?”

“Molly, I’ve never been on a date. I wouldn’t know what to do or say or how to act,” I said, each word coming out as slowly as an extracted tooth.

“I can teach you all that stuff,” she said.

“Then I should ask you to the dance, shouldn’t I?”

“That’s the normal procedure,” she said.

“Molly Huger, would you go to the dance with me Friday night after the game?”

“I would be most honored, Leo,” Molly said. “I can’t thank you enough for the invitation.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Ask away.”

“Have you ever dated another boy besides Chad?”

“Never.” She burst into tears and hung up the phone.

In a reverie composed of both terror and ecstasy, I moved out toward the kitchen, where I began to warm up the meal my father had cooked for me. When I sat down to eat dinner, Father joined me as he did every night, to discuss the events of the day.

“Did the chef do a good job, son?”

“He can work in my kitchen anytime,” I replied. “The flank steak’s delicious. The squash and asparagus couldn’t be better. The mashed potatoes, perfect.”

“Balance is the key to everything. What did Miss Molly want from our boy?”

“The strangest thing in the world,” I said. “She wants me to go to the dance with her after the game.”

“Strange
is not the appropriate word,” Father said. “How about
fabulous
or
splendiferous
or
prodigious?
It’s not a bad thing when one of the prettiest, nicest girls in the world wants to go dancing with you.”

“Molly’s way too pretty for a boy like me,” I said. “Chad broke up with her today, so she’s feeling hurt. Chad asked Bettina Trask to the dance.”

“Uh-oh,” my father said. “We know what that boy’s after. Bettina has quite a reputation.”

“I’ve gotten to know her a little bit this year. Her family’s poor, and her father’s a no-account. In fact, I heard he was in prison. But Bettina’s really smart and, I think, ambitious.”

“Wormy Ledbetter doesn’t get you very far on the ambition scale,” Father said.

“But dating Chad Rutledge will improve her social standing in a heartbeat,” I said.

Father laughed and dropped his hands. “I bet Chad’s stuffy mother goes nuts when she hears the news.”

“Molly’s mother didn’t like it a bit that I called. She couldn’t even pretend to be nice.”

“South of Broad is a conspiracy of platelets, son: blood and breeding are all that matter there. No, that’s not true: there’s got to be a truck full of money somewhere near the blood bank.”

“No wonder Molly’s mother is upset. We don’t have money. My God, we’re Catholic. Not much family to talk of. Zip for aristocracy. Zip for clubs. From Chad Rutledge to Leo King. Molly’s in a freefall.”

“I bet this is the first original thing that Molly’s ever done,” Father answered. “In a way, it’s her declaration of independence.”

“What’ll I do if Molly wants to dance?”

“Then, you dance with her. Dancing with a pretty girl makes it fun to be alive.”

“I don’t know how to dance, not really. Sheba tried to teach me at my party this summer, but that’s it.”

My father slapped his hand against his forehead. “Damnation. We used to dance all over this house, with you on my feet and Steve on your mother’s feet. That’s it, Leo; that’s the cause. We stopped dancing after Steve died. We let our house die around us. The music died. We lost sight of you completely. We came close to losing you. Jesus, you’ve never been on a date! What in the hell were we thinking?”

“None of us did well with the Steve thing,” I said.

“Tomorrow night when you get home from football practice, put on your dancing shoes, son. This joint is going to be hopping.”

And my father was as good as his word. After practice the following afternoon, I was driving Niles back to the orphanage when he surprised me by saying, “Your father invited Starla, Betty, and me over for dinner. He said something about dance lessons.”

“Holy God, Father gets so carried away,” I said.

“You’re lucky to have him,” Niles said. “I wish he was my father.”

“Do you know who your father is, Niles?”

“Yeah,” Niles said. “Enough said.”

“Enough said,” I agreed.

I could hear loud music pouring out of my house when I pulled up in the driveway, and I noticed that my mother’s car was gone. My father was in the backyard grilling cheeseburgers and corn on the cob, and Betty was serving everyone coleslaw and potato salad from huge wooden bowls. Sheba and Trevor were throwing their trash into an aluminum can when Niles and I walked into the backyard.

Sheba said, “Hurry up, slowpokes. We’ve got to teach you boys some foot-flogging. The party’s inside.”

Trevor was dragging Starla and Betty into the house. Father shut down the grill, removed his apron and showy toque, and hurried in to play his role of disc jockey. He was grinning with pleasure he could not contain.

“Where’s Mother?” I asked.

“She wanted no part of this,” he said. “She was mad as hell that I set it up on a school night. So she got huffy and went down to the library.”

Inside, Sheba and Trevor gave lessons in the basics of rock and roll, the shag, the fish, and even the stroll. The twins danced with the naturalness of trees moving with the wind. As they held each other, all the congruence and elaborateness of dance became clear to all us voyeurs who watched those bodies at play in their own divine gracefulness.

But we were not there to observe, but to learn to dance. Trevor took the boys to one side of the room and began teaching us steps of great simplicity. “Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. You learn by making mistakes. You get better by making mistakes. Let yourselves go. Don’t think. Just dance. Just let your bodies go. Dancing is just the body loving itself.”

For three hours, we practiced steps and jumped around in a comedy of clumsiness and error. But because of the patience and goodwill of the twins, we ended up performing a rote imitation of the spirit of the dance. I started to loosen up and enjoy myself, and that night I was set free from my danceless body forever.

Then they taught us the waltz, the pure finesse of the slow dance where you hold a girl’s hand and put another hand on her waist and pull her close to you. “The slow dance is really what all teenage boys and girls want to do,” Sheba said. “You get to hold someone you adore, and hold them close. Your cheek touches their cheek. You can breathe into their ear. You can let them know how you feel by how you touch. Or cling to them. You can tell each other secrets without saying a single word. When a bride and groom get married, they always begin that marriage with a slow dance. There’s a reason for that. Leo, let’s show them that reason.”

Sheba lifted her hand toward me, and I took it as though I were handling a stick of dynamite. My father put on a record called “Love Is Blue,” an instrumental as pretty as a Charleston street. Putting my arm around Sheba’s waist, I pulled her to me, and we began to dance—not think, but dance, and Sheba made it look as though I could. I wanted that song to play on forever. But the record stopped and time stopped and Sheba and I stepped back from each other. She curtsied, and I bowed. I felt blooming and handsome and un-toadlike.

The phone rang, and I walked over to answer it.

“Is this Leo King?” a female voice asked.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“This is Jane Parker, Dr. Colwell’s assistant. We had a cancellation, and Dr. Colwell can operate on Starla Whitehead at eight in the morning this Friday, at Medical U. Can she be there?”

“Starla Whitehead will be there,” I said, then returned to the dancers and announced to the room: “Starla, Dr. Colwell’s gonna fix your eye!”

The room cheered. Starla went to Niles, and brother and sister wept together in the quietest and most tender way. Their cargo of sadness always seemed unbearable, even on the night when both of them learned to dance.

CHAPTER 19
Pilgrims

B
ecause I recount a past of utmost importance to those of us who survived it, I find myself trying for an exactness that might be unreachable. But color, smell, and music have always opened the rose windows, blind alleys, and trapdoors of the past in ways I find astonishing. My route as a paperboy has now retreated in memory as a related series of smells, barking dogs, early risers, joggers along the Battery, the discussion of the news with Eugene Haverford, my luxuriant daydreaming as I pedaled and slung and thought about the good life I was riding out to lead. My memories seem evergreen and verdant, so I am always comfortable walking through the front door of my past, confident in the shape and certitude of all that I carry from those days.

On the day of Starla’s operation, I delivered my newspapers with uncommon efficiency and speed. Afterward, I skipped going to Mass with my parents at the cathedral and having breakfast at Cleo’s, and drove directly to the orphanage, where Starla and Niles awaited my arrival. Mr. Lafayette opened the gates with a key the size of a switchblade, then hugged Starla, wishing her the best of luck. It was the first time I realized that Starla had not taken off her sunglasses in public since Sheba had presented them as a gift. She and Niles both got in the front seat of the car, and I noted that Starla’s hands were trembling as her brother tried to calm her fears.

“Starla’s terrified,” Niles said, speaking for her, as he often did in times of distress.

“So would anyone else be,” I said. “It’s natural.”

“She wants me to go into the operating room with her,” Niles told me.

“Dr. Colwell said they have strict procedures for surgery. They won’t let you.”

Starla managed in a small, shaky voice, “I don’t think I can do it without Niles. The idea of someone cutting through my eyeball is more than I can take. I don’t want to go.”

I tried to allay her fears. “Dr. Colwell says you’re going to have beautiful eyes when the operation is over. Do you want to have to wear sunglasses the rest of your life? Do you wear those things when you sleep?”

“Yes,” she said, surprising me with quiet candor. “I only take them off in the shower. I want to hug Sheba every time I see her for giving them to me. You don’t know what it’s like to be a freak.”

“You won’t need ‘em after today, I promise,” I said. “Starla, listen to me. Dr. Colwell can fix all that.”

“You didn’t hear her, buddy-roo,” Niles said. “She don’t want to do it, she said. We ain’t going to the hospital.”

“I heard you, buddy-roo,” I said as I slammed on the brakes. “I’m taking Starla to the best eye surgeon in Charleston. He’s operating for free. Now, I know what your sister’s going through. My nickname’s the Toad, because my glasses are so thick they make my eyes look froggy. I know that. I own a mirror. If there was an operation for my eyes, I’d throw your sister out of the car and have Dr. Colwell do me instead. So if you don’t like it, Niles, get out of here. Leave us alone. In a couple of hours, this is gonna be over with. Done.”

Niles looked at his sister, who said: “He’s right, Niles.”

“I’m only going along with this because you asked me to,” Niles said to her. “And of course he’s right. He’s the fucking Toad.”

Relieved, I told Niles, “My heartless mother said you and I could wait outside the surgery room during the operation.”

“That’s mighty nice of her,” Starla said.

“She’ll never tell you this, but she’s rooting hard for you two. She thinks God gave you a raw deal,” I said. “Here we are. You two get out, and I’ll park the car. Go on up to the surgical unit. They’re waiting for you, Starla.”

“Has Dr. Colwell ever done this kind of operation before?” Starla asked nervously. “I wanted to ask him during the examination. But he was so nice to me that I chickened out.”

“Well, he’s operated before, but never on anybody’s eyeball. Until today, that is,” I said. “His specialty is removing plantar warts.”

“You sorry son of a bitch,” Niles snarled. “Joking around at a time like this. I’m going to whip your ass when we get to the waiting room.”

“Joking? Thank God he was joking,” Starla said. “I needed a joke. I need to laugh.” She took a breath and murmured, “I can do this.”

“Then do it, mountain girl,” I said. “I hear they don’t make girls any tougher.”

“Never mess with me, Toad,” Starla said as she punched me on the shoulder and got out of the car. “Promise me if this operation doesn’t work, you won’t call me Cyclops, though.”

“Promise,” I said.

An hour passed in the waiting room, and Niles began to pace like a caged panther, his muscles taut and his eyes burning. A door opened, and Fraser Rutledge made a surprise entrance, going directly over to Niles, giving him a sisterly hug. The hospital was a block south of Ashley Hall, the private school Fraser attended; she had gotten permission to skip her study hall to visit a sick friend. She whispered a few words to Niles, and though I could not hear them, I could see his shoulder muscles relax as she got him to sit down. She walked over to me, gave me a rough hug, and said, “You’ve been the talk at our dinner table for the past couple of nights, Leo.”

“Why on earth?” I asked.

“Chad admitted that he’d broken up with Molly. Man, it hit our house like an A-bomb. Molly’s mother called my mother and said Chad had asked that slut Bettina Trask to the dance.”

“Bettina’s not that bad,” I said. “She’s up from crap, but she’s smart as hell and tries hard. She’s in my mother’s advanced English course. Ask Niles.”

“Bettina’s been nice to me and Starla,” Niles said. “Even after we got into a fight with her boyfriend on the first day of school.”

“Well, I hear she puts out like a Pez dispenser,” Fraser said. “And Toad, I hear you’re playing sloppy seconds for Chad.”

“Do your parents know you and I are dating yet, Fraser?” Niles asked.

“Not yet,” she admitted nervously. “And the time certainly isn’t now.”

“The orphan and Bettina Trask,” Niles said. “Too much shame for your parents to bear in one week.”

“Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself again, Niles Whitehead,” Fraser said. “I won’t rich-girl you to death if you don’t beat me with the orphan stick, okay?”

At that moment, Dr. Gauldin Colwell entered the waiting room, wearing his scrubs and that maritime calmness that seemed to be his greatest asset as a physician. He was a handsome, aristocratic man who looked like he was bred to wear a stethoscope. His very presence calmed me, but more important, I saw a visible relaxation in Niles’s ruffled demeanor.

Gathering us around him, Dr. Colwell spoke in a soft, authoritative voice. “I believe the operation was a success, but we won’t know for sure for about forty-eight hours. Everything looked good. I’ll be over each morning this weekend to check on the progress of her healing. We’ll keep her groggy and sedated the whole time. I don’t let my patients suffer pain. Before you go, you’ll need to learn how to apply eye drops.”

“I can do that, Doctor,” Niles said. “I’m her brother.”

“So I hear,” Dr. Colwell said, turning to Niles. “You owe a debt of gratitude to Leo King here. He’s the one who asked me to do this operation.”

“He’s got it, Doctor,” Niles answered. “For as long as we live.”

“You’ve got something too, Dr. Colwell,” I said.

“What’s that, Leo?” the doctor asked.

“Free newspapers the rest of your life.”

“That’s unnecessary,” he said. “But very gracious.”

His young assistant, Jane Parker, as pretty as a cornflower, came out into the waiting room and asked, “Who needs to learn how to apply eye drops?”

“Teach all of them,” Dr. Colwell said. He began to leave, then stopped to say, “Mr. Whitehead, your sister is going to have something new come into her life, I expect.”

“What’s that, Doctor?” Niles asked.

“Gentleman callers,” he said. “Lots of gentlemen callers.”

“I don’t get it,” Niles said.

Jane Parker laughed. “Your sister’s a pretty girl. A darling girl. This is going to change her life.”

I
n the locker room that night, an undercurrent of discord was loose as the players laced up their shoulder pads and strapped hip pads to their waists. Something invisible had sucked the spirit out of our team, and we seemed lethargic as the crowd filled the aisles of Stoney Field, fired up by our undefeated season. The Hanahan team seemed like it was marching in step to some nihilistic death march that would bring our bright season to a demoralizing finish. The fiery love of competition that had carried us to a ninth-place ranking among the largest high schools of our state had either called in sick or decided to take a Friday night off. I could feel the first loss of the season adhering to our record before I had even finished dressing. Luckily, I was not the only one to notice it.

Ike looked around. “What’s wrong, Toad?”

“We seem dead,” I said. “We all need to be on an IV.”

“Hey, Renegades!” Ike yelled as he got up, fully dressed and ready to go. He went down the line pounding shoulder pads and slapping boys on the ass, trying to light a fire in a room without kindling or oxygen. “Let me see some fight in your eyes!” he exhorted. “You’re acting like scarecrows. Barnyard chickens. You guys forget who we are? We’re the goddamn Renegades. We’ve beaten the Summerville Green Wave, the Beaufort Tidal Wave, the St. Andrews Rocks. And tonight we’re playing a tough-as-shit Hanahan team that hasn’t lost a game, either. Where’s the fight in you guys? Tell me where it went to hide, and I’ll get up a search party to go find it.”

A voice answered Ike, rebellious and unappeasable. “Sit down and shut up, boy. You’re beating a dead horse.” The voice came from Wormy Ledbetter, who sat by his locker half-dressed.

His challenge to the cocaptain seemed cancerous to team unity, so I went to where Wormy sat and brought both my fists down hard on his shoulder pads. He jumped up with fists clenched, ready to fight me and Ike at the same time.

Niles intervened by pulling me back by my jersey. “Call a team meeting before the coaches get here,” he told Ike.

Ike ordered, “Everybody dress on the double! One minute, then we meet in the conference room.”

This decree caused some grumbling among both the white and the black players, but at least it was an audible sign that the team was no longer brain-dead. In less than sixty seconds, our entire team faced Ike and me as we stood in front of the blackboard, which was Coach Jefferson’s personal realm of power.

“Let’s finish this thing,” Ike said, “whatever it is. I don’t know who this team is.”

“Guys,” I said, “what’s wrong with the Renegades? We’ve gone through so much together.”

The silence was complete, unbreakable. I was about to say something else inane in the vocabulary-stunted limitations of sport when Niles spoke up. “Wormy’s pissed off because Chad’s dating his girlfriend after the game tonight.”

Ike whistled. “Chad, are you a plain fool or what? From what I hear, Bettina and Wormy’ve been going together forever.”

Chad, nervous and uncertain, said, “I think Bettina just wanted to try a little white meat from the other side of the tracks.”

From knowing Chad, I understood his response was part bravado and part an unstrategic use of his sense of humor. As I was trying to think of a funnier response, I watched the rhinoceros-like charge of Wormy leaping over three of his teammates to get to Chad, who was sitting next to a cinder-block wall. Amid the flailing fists and bursts of creative profanity, we managed to separate the two combatants. Chad was lucky for the success of our intervention—I thought Wormy would have severed Chad’s carotid artery with his crooked, yellowed teeth in the fury of that headlong charge. Ike and I got unsteady handholds on Wormy’s uniform, and he was guided back to his seat with far less relief than Chad felt. When Ike and I gained control of the atmosphere, you could feel an agitation that had replaced the spiritual hollowness that had infected my teammates.

As Ike began to speak, Coach Jefferson and his assistant entered from the coaching office. I ran down the cement aisle to intercept them and said, “We need five minutes, Coach. Got to clear some things up. Team trouble, but we can handle it.”

Though Coach Jefferson was surprised, he was immediately responsive. “Four minutes.” He and his assistant retreated to his small, airless office. I ran back to the front of the blackboard.

“Wormy,” Ike said, “we can’t sacrifice this team for our love lives. We’ve all worked too hard. All of you know how I feel about Betty, but if my feelings for her ever got in the way of this team, I’d drop her, or at least during the season. All you guys got girlfriends. We’re football players, and girls like us. All of us, except the Toad.”

Even Wormy Ledbetter laughed along with the rest of my teammates. I roared too, admiring the brilliance of Ike’s strategy.

Chad’s voice rang in anger above the laughter. “Hell, that’s why I asked Bettina to the dance—the Toad asked Molly out! Bettina’s been calling me for weeks.”

Ike said with pure sarcasm, “Chad, you don’t mean to tell me you got snaked by a fucking amphibian?” Again, the team screamed with laughter, Wormy leading the way.

“Women can’t keep their hands off me,” I said. “It’s been a problem since I was a kid. You guys call me the Toad, but women call me the Mink.”

“Shit, bet you never kissed a girl,” Chad sneered.

“That’ll change tonight after he takes out Molly.” Niles grinned, earning a big laugh from everyone but Chad, till Ike raised his hand to silence the room.

“That’s enough. We got enough juice here to kick the living hell out of Hanahan. Wormy, use your anger about Bettina and Chad to have your best game of the year. The offensive line will make holes that you could drag a dead mule through. But we got to find a way to stay angry and hostile against our opponents. This thing called team is a holy word to me. I’ll beat the shit out of anyone who brings their poison to this locker room again. You hear me, Wormy? You hear me, Chad? Now, let’s take all this bad feeling—all of it—and make Hanahan High feel bad, real bad.”

A cheer went up as Coach Jefferson and his assistant entered from the rear, sensing a team incorrigible in its will to win. What Ike had let loose among us was the dream-stuff of worthy coaches.