South of Broad (7 page)

I watched the face of Anthony Jefferson, then said, “His name is Howard Drawdy.”

The coach whistled and I knew he would instantly recognize the name. “The best quarterback in the history of Bishop Ireland High School,” he said. “But still, he screwed you good. He got you into big-time trouble.”

“My brother, Steve, worshipped Howard Drawdy. Howard was always nice to my brother.”

“Your brother who killed himself?” the coach asked.

“Yes, sir. And Steve once told me how poor Howard was, how his father was dead, and he lived in a trailer, and he couldn’t go to Bishop Ireland without a scholarship.”

“That guy owes you the bank, Leo,” the coach said. “He’s the starting quarterback at Clemson this year. Did he ever thank you?”

“No, sir, he didn’t have to. But he’s really nice to me every time I see him.”

“So you got arrested. You get a trial. You get a police record. You go on probation, report to a probation officer. You do community service, you get kicked out of school. And the guy never thanks you?” “I don’t think he knows what to say, Coach.”

“I think he’s a perfect shit, Leo.” He paused. “Okay.” He stood up and held out a hand. “Shake on it. I’ll never tell a soul what you just told me. I’d rather die than break that promise to you.”

I stood up and we shook hands, his powerful and large.

“Now I have a problem I need help with, Leo.”

“Anything, Coach Jefferson. Anything.”

“You’re going to be one of the leaders of my team. But you’ve got to help me with something. My son, Ike, is bitter about having to change schools his senior year. I graduated from Brooks High, so did his grand-daddy; his mother, her mother.”

“What can I do?”

“Meet my son over at Johnson Hagood Stadium tomorrow at nine. Work out together. Get to know each other. I wrote up a conditioning program for him. It’ll do you some good too. Just one rule for the summer: if you ever call my son a nigger, I’ll kill you.”

“Not if my mother or father get to me first,” I told him.

“They won’t let you say that word?”

“Not even in a joke.”

“My son’s not allowed to call you ‘honky’ or ‘cracker’ or ‘white motherfucker,’ either.”

“What’s he allowed to call me?” I asked. “In football, you always get mad at the guy who’s just knocked you on your butt. Always. So you’ve got to call him something.”

“I thought of that already. If my son makes you mad enough that you want to rip his head off and call him the worst name you can think of, then call him Dr. George Washington Carver, after the great black scientist from Tuskegee University.”

“The peanut guy?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“What can he call me?”

“He’s got to call you Strom Thurmond. That’s about as big an insult as a black man can yell at a white man.”

“Sir, if I get mad at you at practice, do I call you Dr. George Washington Carver?”

“Call me Coach Jefferson. Anything else and I kick your ass. Hey, King? You think the other white boys’ll play for me?”

“Yes, sir. I know they will.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because they love the game,” I said. “And I bet they love those games on Friday night more than they do segregation.”

A
t nine sharp the next morning, I was standing in the south end zone of Johnson Hagood Stadium watching Ike Jefferson walking across the north end zone. We walked slowly toward each other until we met at the 50-yard line, and a strange wariness set up shop between us. Ike did not smile or shake my hand or offer any greeting. He was chewing gum and flipping a football up into the air as a way of ignoring me. He kept flipping the ball, catching it with one hand, then flipping it again.

“Did you bring your father’s workout plan with you?” I asked.

“Seem to have forgotten it, white boy.” Ike looked at me for the first time.

“Gosh, Ike, ol’ buddy, I didn’t like the way it sounded when you called me ‘white boy.’”

“I didn’t mean it to sound friendly.”

“Since you forgot to bring Coach’s instructions, you want to run some laps to warm up? Or maybe do some calisthenics?”

“You do whatever white boys like to do,” Ike said.

“I knew integration was going to be a pain in the ass, Ike,” I said. “I really did. But I thought I was going to have to worry about my redneck boys a lot more than the black kids.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, white boy.”

“Hey, Dr. George Washington Carver Junior, you keep calling me
‘white boy’
and I’m going to start calling you a name with a long tradition in the South that rhymes with Roy Rogers’s horse.”

“You got quite a temper there, Strom Thurmond,” he said.

“You’ve been screwing with me, Dr. George Washington Carver Junior.”

“Just a little bit, Strom. You’re a sensitive little soda cracker, aren’t you? You were about to fight me, weren’t you?”

“Yep. Sure was.”

“Does it bother you that I could kick your ass?”

“A little bit. But I was going to throw the first punch when you tossed that football up in the air. Before that ball came down, I was going to break your jaw.”

“Can you beat up any of those other white boys in that school of yours?”

“Not many of them,” I said. “I’m not even sure I can beat up many of the white girls.”

Ike surprised me by breaking out into an unexpected grin. He tossed me the ball. “You know something, Strom? I’m afraid I may even like you before this is over.”

“I hope not,” I said as I lateralled the ball back to him.

From his back pocket, Ike pulled out a piece of paper that revealed his father’s workout plan. I read it over and whistled. “He’s trying to kill us.”

“His players are always in better shape than the other team,” Ike said. “Let’s start with ten laps, Strom.”

“It’ll be a pleasure, Dr. George Washington Carver Junior.”

“I hope you enjoy watching my fat ass running ahead of you.” He began to run.

“Here’s what you and your daddy don’t know about me,” I said. “I look nerdy, but I run pretty fast.”

I took off after him, and for an hour we ran sprints, did assorted agility drills, and performed push-ups and sit-ups at twenty-minute intervals. At the end of the session, we went up in the stands. I put Ike on my back and tried to run to the top of the stadium. I went twenty steps before I collapsed in exhaustion. We returned to the bottom of the stairs, and Ike put me on his shoulders. He reached thirty-five steps before he collapsed. In our exhaustion that first day, all we could do was laugh when we staggered on the stairs in a heap of sweat and panting and grass-stained clothes.

It was Ike who first called it “carrying the cross.” That is what integration felt like for everyone after
Brown v. Board of Education
, when boys like me and Ike and men and women like my parents and Coach Jefferson were put to the noble task of making it work.

Panting in the shade of the lower bleachers, I said, “You are one fat-assed George Washington Carver Junior. Why don’t you lose some weight?”

“Take off your glasses next time I carry your ass to the top,” Ike said. “What do those things weigh—about twenty pounds?”

“You’re just weak as water.”

“Me? Weak? If the other white boys look like you, we’re gonna get our asses whipped good this year.”

“How many guys from your team are coming to Peninsula?” I asked.

“Maybe ten. My daddy would like to get another dozen or so, but a lot of guys wanted to stick with the high school in their neighborhood. Like me. But your old lady messed up my plans by making my daddy the coach.”

“Instead of having to listen to you run your gums every day, Ike, why don’t we go down and have a fistfight on the fifty-yard line? Let’s just get it over with; then we can get on with working out.”

“We can’t have a fistfight until after lunch,” Ike said. “We’re having lunch at my house, and I can’t have you bleeding on my mother’s new rug.”

“Who said I was eating lunch at your house?”

“My daddy,” Ike said, in exasperation. “Our coach did. I ain’t ever eat with a white boy, and I’ll bet you make the food taste like shit.” “I’ll try to make it a nightmare for you.”

“You’re already a nightmare,” Ike said. “Please shut up. Here comes my daddy.”

Coach Jefferson entered by the alumni gate and walked slowly toward where we sat at the bottom of the bleachers. “You boys look like you’ve been working hard. Your clothes are soaked. You two get along okay?”

“Your son wouldn’t even shake my hand at first, Coach,” I said. “Then we did great.”

“We did okay,” Ike said, a slight echo of insolence in his voice that Coach Jefferson caught in an instant.

“No lip from you, son.” He studied Ike, then said, “Tell Leo why you didn’t shake his hand, and tell him true. I’m not asking—he needs to know.”

“I’ve been going to Brooks since kindergarten,” Ike explained. “Thought I’d graduate this year from Brooks. I’ve always been afraid of white people. They scare me to death.”

“Tell him why, Ike,” the coach said.

“My uncle Rushton got shot by a white cop in Walterboro. He shot him in the back, killed him. Said he back-sassed him and threatened him. The cop got off with a warning.”

“Go on. Tell the rest of it,” Coach commanded.

“My uncle was a deaf-mute. Never said a word in his life,” he said. Then he surprised both of us by tearing up, angry tears he was at pains to conceal.

I was taken aback by the tears and muttered, in perfect sincerity: “That’s the worst story I ever heard in my life.”

“It is that,” the coach agreed. He put his arms around us and began walking us toward the north side of the field. For a minute we just walked, waiting for Ike to gain control of his emotions.

“I am naming you two young men as the cocaptains of the Peninsula High Renegades for the coming season,” Coach said.

“Coach, a lot of guys are coming back from last year’s team,” I said, “who’re a lot better football players than I am. Wormy Ledbetter is one of the best fullbacks in the state.”

“King, I didn’t say you were my first choice as the white cocaptain. In fact, I called Wormy’s home to give him that high honor. He’s a better football player than you. I watched all the films.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Not a word, at least not to me. His father found out who I was and said no nigger son of a bitch better call his house again. So I assured him I would not. I called two other white players and I got the same results. We’re going to be lucky to be able to field a whole team this year. But you are my white cocaptain, and Ike is my black cocaptain. And boys, together we’re going to make history.

“Now, I want you two to meet at nine every morning of this summer, except Sundays. Coach Red Parker said we could use the weight room at The Citadel. Chal Port’s going to design a weight program just for you two guys, and I’m going to devise you a workout from hell. I’m going to practically kill you. I can’t be here; it’s against the rules. But I trust you two guys with my job and my heart. When football practice starts, you’re the two studs who’re going to take me across the finish line.”

I looked at Ike and said, “I’ll outwork you.”

“That’ll be the day, you honky cracker son of a bitch,” he said.

“Start running, son,” the coach snapped. “Five laps.”

“I forgot, Daddy.”

“Seems like Dr. George Washington Carver Junior doesn’t have a very good memory, Coach.”

“Kiss my ass,” Ike said, then added, “Strom Thurmond.”

We both laughed, and I started running with Ike.

“King, you don’t run. You didn’t screw up,” the coach shouted.

“When my cocaptain runs, I run,” I said. “That all right with you, Coach?”

“I’ll be.” He hurled his hat to the ground. “It sounds like the beginning of a goddamn team to me.”

By the end of that summer, I could carry Ike Jefferson two times to the top of Johnson Hagood Stadium, and two times down. Because he was stronger, Ike could make it to the top three times, but collapsed on the top step. Though I had never been through anything like it physically, Ike and I were more than ready when practice began in August. The surprise of that summer was that I ripened into a strong and formidable young man. But the real shock to everyone was that Ike Jefferson and I would be friends for the rest of our lives.

CHAPTER 4
Downtown

A
few days after Bloomsday, I walked down Broad Street and spotted Henry Berlin measuring the width of a man’s shoulders with his measuring tape. I knocked on the plate-glass window of Berlin’s clothing store. He made a notation with a piece of chalk, waved at me, then called out, “Hey, jailbird.” That wicked yet good-natured salutation always made me laugh. I hadn’t forgotten that Henry Berlin had been one of the first Charleston adults to embrace my reentry into life after my turbulent week as the most famous unnamed drug dealer in the county. Though the
News and Courier
could not use my name because I was underage, Leo King came up in even the most casual conversations on every street and restaurant that month. By calling me “jailbird,” Mr. Berlin had offered the first exit out of my predicament by allowing me to laugh at myself.

Normally, I would have stopped and talked to him, but he was busy with a customer, and I was cutting it close for an appointment with my shrink, Jacqueline Criddle. She was as serious about time as a watch repairman, so I jogged to her office above an antique store. I passed through an alley, then took a flight of flimsily built stairs to the second story and entered an air-conditioned room that was an oasis of good taste and serenity there in the heart of downtown, sitar music playing on a stereo. When I had first come to this room, I was still fresh from my traumatic trial in juvenile court. It took me more than a year before I could begin to appreciate the rain-foresty tranquillity of the room, which smelled of hyacinths and ferns. After a rocky start, I had come to revere the skills of Dr. Criddle as she proceeded with infinite care to put my life in order again.

Soundlessly, a green light came on above her office door. I entered and went straight for the leather chair where I always sat facing her.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Criddle,” I said.

“Good afternoon, Leo,” she replied.

Though I was a teenage boy locked in that maddening, wet-behind-the-ears stage of complete social unease, I thought that all women over thirty years old were menopausal and approaching their deathbeds. But it was not lost on me that Dr. Jacqueline Criddle was a most attractive woman with an admirable figure and pretty legs.

“So, how goes it, Mr. Leo King?” She looked over some notes from my file.

I thought about it before I answered. “It’s going great, Dr. Criddle.”

She glanced up with a quizzical eye. “You’ve never said that to me in all our time together. What’s happened, Leo?”

“I think I’m in the middle of living a good week. Maybe a real good one.”

“Whoa. Back up. Hold your horses. You sound like you’re on drugs for sure.”

“I’m feeling so good …” I paused. “I’m even starting to like my mother a little bit.”

My shrink laughed. “Now, surely that’s a hallucination.”

“I’ve found myself feeling pity for her. I’ve put my parents through a lot. Did you know my mother was once a Catholic nun?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was aware of that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It never came up, Leo,” she said. “You never mentioned it.”

“I just found out. Why wouldn’t she tell me something like that?”

“She must’ve thought it’d only make things worse for you.”

“I guess. But things couldn’t have been much worse, could they?”

“They were pretty bad,” said Dr. Criddle. “But you’ve come a long way. You’re the pride of juvenile court.”

I laughed. “Music for my mother’s heart.”

“She’s actually proud of what you’ve accomplished,” Dr. Criddle told me. “You’ve done everything the court has asked of you. And much, much more.”

“Y’all kept me busy.”

“Judge Alexander called today. He wants all of us to clean up our business with you this summer.”

“I still have a hundred hours of community service to finish.”

“He’s cut it down to fifty.”

“What about Mr. Canon? He needs me.”

“I’ve called him, Leo. It’s true that he fully expected you to be his personal manservant for the rest of his life, but he’ll have to make do.”

“He’s told me as much.”

“What a dreadful man,” she said. “When they assigned you to him, I argued that it was cruel and unusual punishment.”

“He’s all alone in the world,” I explained. “I think I’m all he’s got. He’s afraid to let people see his kind side. Always looking for trouble that never comes. I’m grateful to him. To all of you. You especially, Doctor.”

“You’ve done the work, Leo,” she said. I could feel her withdrawing into her shell like a box turtle you stumble on in the woods. “I’ve facilitated your therapy. Remember, I’m just court-appointed.”

“Remember how I was when I first came to this office with my parents?”

“You were a big mess.”

“How big?”

She picked up my file from the table that separated us. It was thick enough to strike an ominous chord in me each time she displayed it. In my mind, my file represented some cold-blooded book of hours compiled with malice by that most cunning enemy of my childhood—myself.

“Here is how I described you at that time. ‘Leo King seems terrified, depressed, anxious, ashamed, totally confused, and possibly suicidal.’”

“Don’t you miss that guy?” I asked.

“No, I don’t. But it took a lot of work to get where we are today. I’ve never had an adolescent boy work as hard to make himself well. Your mother looked like she wanted to kill you that day. Your dad looked like he wanted to run far away with you and leave no forwarding address. There was such agony in this room. That was almost three years ago.”

“You spotted my mother that first day,” I remembered.

“She is a formidable woman,” she said. “A good woman, but she overpowered you and your dad that day.”

“Nothing’s changed there,” I told her. “We’re still not in her league.”

“But you’ve learned strategies to work around her. And with her. Do you remember what your dad did that day?”

“He cried for an hour. Couldn’t stop. Said I blamed him for Steve’s death.”

“You did blame him … at least a little bit.”

“It was the only clue I had, Dr. Criddle. The week before he died, Steve was sleeping when I heard him screaming, ‘No, Father. No, please.’ I woke him up and Steve told me he was having a nightmare. He laughed about it. Then he was dead.”

“I’ve never seen a father love a boy like yours loves you, Leo,” she said.

“You’ve never liked my mother, though.”

“Don’t go putting words in my mouth,” she said.

“Fair enough, Doctor. But you’ve taught me to tell you the truth. Otherwise, therapy isn’t worth a hill of beans. Your exact words. Here is what I think is true: you don’t like my mother.”

“What I think about her is irrelevant,” she said. “It’s what you think about her that counts.”

“I’ve come to terms with her.”

“That’s a great accomplishment. Sometimes that’s the best we can do. You’ve become patient and forgiving with your mom. I’m not sure I could do the same in your shoes.”

“She’s not your mother.”

“Thank God,” Dr. Criddle said, and we both laughed.

•   •   •

H
eading north on King Street, I jaywalked to the other side, moving toward Harrington Canon’s antique dealership across from the Sottile Theatre. Because I had the Southern boy’s disease of needing to be liked by everyone I met, Mr. Canon had presented me with the dilemma of being impossible to please about anything. I never had to worry about whether Mr. Canon would be in a good mood: he lived out his whole life as an anthem to the pleasures of a bad mood. Our first weeks together had been nightmarish, and it took me a while to grow accustomed to his starchiness. It was not that he lived as though he were wearing a crown of thorns that bothered me, but that he cherished those thorns and would have it no other way.

When I approached the doorway of his shop, it was so dark my eyes had to adjust before he materialized, his head reminiscent of a great horned owl, at his English writing desk against the back wall.

“You’re sweating like an up-country hog,” he said. “Go wash up before your bodily fluids stain my precious merchandise.”

“Hey, Mr. Canon. Why, I’m doing just peachy, sir! And so is my family. Thanks for your kind inquiries.”

“You are white trash, pure and simple, Leo. A sad fact that you bitterly resent. I would never think of inquiring about your family. Because, sir, like you, they mean nothing to me.”

“Does an up-country hog sweat more than the ones around Charleston?” I asked.

“Low Country hogs are too well bred to sweat.”

“I’ve seen you sweat. Much worse than an up-country hog.”

“You are a scoundrel even to suggest such a thing.” He eyed me through glasses as thick as my own. “Charlestonians never sweat. We sometimes dew up like hydrangea bushes or well-tended lawns.”

“Well, you sure do ‘dew up’ a lot, Mr. Canon. But I always thought it was because you were tighter than a tick and refused to turn on the air conditioner in this store.”

“Ah. You are referring to my prudence, my admirable frugality.”

“No, sir. I was referring to your cheapness. You told me once you could squeeze a penny hard enough to make Lincoln get a nosebleed.”

“Lincoln, the great anti-Christ. The defiler of the South. I’d like to give him more than a nosebleed. I still think John Wilkes Booth is one of the most underrated of American heroes.”

“How are your feet feeling?”

“When did you earn a medical degree, sir?” he asked. “The last time I looked, my feet belonged to me and me alone. I don’t recall handing them over to you with a bill of sale.”

“Mr. Canon,” I said, exhausted by the subject already, “you know your doctor asked me to make sure you soaked your feet in hot water and Epsom salts. He’s worried about you not taking care of yourself.”

“It was a disgraceful breach of confidentiality,” Mr. Canon said. “I’m still thinking about filing a report to the medical authorities and having him defrocked. He had no right to reveal such intimate details of my life to a common criminal.”

I started weaving my way through a narrow path of bureaus and cabinets, until I reached the frayed drapery that led to a broken-down kitchen. I turned on the hot water, waited until it burned my hand, then filled an enamel washbasin half-full. I poured in a cup of Epsom salts, then made my way back to Mr. Canon’s desk at a much slower pace. I had once spilled hot water on one of his overpriced dining tables, and he acted as though I had cut the thumb off the Christ child. His moods were predictable and ran from mercurial to stormy. Today seemed to be an easy day, and I predicted nothing but small-craft warnings for the rest of the afternoon.

“I will not put my feet in that lava,” he said, his mouth set in a thin line.

“It’ll cool down in a sec,” I said, checking my watch.

“A sec. Is that a unit of time? I’ve been living in the South for over sixty years, and I’ve never heard of something called a ‘sec.’ Possibly you’ve taken up a new foreign language at that second-rate public school you attend.”

I tested the water temperature with my index finger and heard Mr. Canon shout at me, “Please do not add your stockpile of school-yard germs to my footbath. I may be fastidious and old-maidish, but good hygiene I take with the utmost seriousness.”

“Stick your smelly tootsies in here, Mr. Canon.” I watched him slip out of a pair of elegant leather-tooled moccasins. He moaned with pleasure as his feet entered the hot water.

Again, I checked my watch. “Ten minutes, and then I’ll be back to dry your feet with my hair. A Mary Magdalene kind of moment.”

“Could you sweep out the shop for me today, Leo? And if there’s time, I’d like you to polish the two English sideboards in the front. Do them right, and with great reverence. They speak volumes about the superiority of Mother England.”

“Be glad to, sir,” I said. “I’ll be back to change your water in a bit.”

“A bit? Isn’t that something that’s part of a horse’s bridle? Or a small particle of almost anything? Or what a snake does to me in the past tense? If you insist on speaking English to me, Leo, I demand a modicum of precision from my employees.”

I grabbed the broom and dustpan before I said, “I am not your employee. The courts of Charleston have punished me by making me your slave. I’m paying my debt to society by cleaning your foul antique store and washing your smelly feet. You seem to like slavery.”

“I adore it. I always knew I would. My family owned hundreds of slaves for centuries. Alas, there was the Emancipation Proclamation. Alas, came Appomattox. Alas, Reconstruction. I was born into the Age of Alas. Then, when you thought life could get no worse—alas, came Leo King.” He laughed a rare laugh. “I far preferred it when you trembled in your boots whenever you walked into this store. I love the smell of fear, glandular and base, given off by the servant classes. But then you figured me out, Leo. I’ve always rued that day.”

“You mean the day I found out you were a pussycat?”

“Yes, that day, that damnable day. I let my guard down in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness,” Mr. Canon said. “I loathe all base emotions, all sentimental claptrap. You caught me off guard, undefended. You did not know it, but I was under heavy medication that day. I was not myself, and you took advantage of my enfeeblement.”

“I brought you a Father’s Day card,” I said. “You cried like a baby.”

“I most certainly did not.”

“You most certainly did. And Father’s Day is coming up again. And I’m getting you another one.”

“I forbid it,” he said.

“Dock my salary.” I headed up the stairs, where five pounds of Charleston dust awaited me; but Mr. Canon had assured me that I labored in swirls of dust made sacred and aristocratic by the history of families who had made my native city so lovely and fine.

Twice I changed the water and replenished the Epsom salts for the soaking of Mr. Canon’s splayed, ungainly feet. I went into the bathroom and retrieved the various oils and ointments to massage his swollen feet. As a man of stupendous modesty, he always made me feel like a lower order of rapist when I pulled up a chair and dried his feet with his delicate, monogrammed towels taken long ago from a family long dead. But it was part of the regimen his doctor insisted upon, and I received no credit for community service if I failed to massage Mr. Canon’s antique feet. He always made this part of our weekly ritual a moment of high drama.