The Color War (3 page)

“Sure. I mean, everyone knows Michael Phelps. And there’s a woman, Diana Nyad, who swam all the way from Cuba to Florida.”

Raymond had no idea if that was a long distance. “I mean people,” he said, “like
me.
”

She blinked. “I … I don’t know.” Her face looked funny—pinched tight—and she grabbed a string of buoys and carried them toward the shed. Raymond did the same, following her, and before she could offer to help, he hung the string on a hook high over his head. By the time she turned to him again, she looked normal—bright and open. Raymond thought that if Melody had to be a time of day, it would have to be
morning
.

“How did I get so lucky to have a helper like you?” Melody asked, locking up the shed and stringing the key around her neck. She walked to the edge of the wooden dock and sat down, her legs stretched in front of her, staring at the horizon. When she saw Raymond hesitating, she patted the spot beside her.

Raymond sat down and gathered up his courage. “Can I ask you another question?”

Melody smiled. “You bet.”

“Where are the white kids?”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“All of us campers, we’re not like you.”

“Skin color doesn’t make you different,” Melody said. “We’re all the same on the inside.”

“The only people who ever say that,” Raymond replied, “are white.”

“Don’t you like being here?” Melody asked. “Isn’t this better than what you normally would—” Her voice broke off, like a branch snapped during a storm. Her cheeks flushed pink and she looked into her lap.

Raymond didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t meant to say anything wrong. He thought of the way, during swimming today, they had worked on opening their eyes underwater. You’d think that with all that wet around you, you wouldn’t be able to see, but it wasn’t like that at all. The light came in sideways, and you could see everything floating and in slow motion. Melody’s hair had become a pool of silk, and her eyes were alive when she held up a few fingers to quiz him.
Three,
he had gasped, bursting through the surface, and for a moment everything had been blurry and loud and he’d wanted nothing more than to sink below the water again and have Melody send him another secret sign.

Now Melody’s mouth was set in a straight line. “Sometimes I say stupid things,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to me, Raymond.”

“How come you’re here?”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “Matthew’s been a counselor for a couple of years, and he likes it a lot. I guess I wanted to do more with my summer vacation than what my friends do—you know, like hang out at the pool or the mall. The Bible says it’s better to give than receive.”

Raymond’s grandmother told him that, too, sometimes. He thought of his grandmother, and of his mother, who had just wanted him to
talk
about what happened in April, as if that would make it better. But to say it out loud only made it more true, which was why he could almost not believe what he said the instant he said it. “Do you want to know,” he asked Melody, “how come I’m here?”

It was April, the first really warm day of the spring. Monroe and Raymond were walking home from school, dodging the soupy patches of melting snow and dog poop. Raymond had his coat off, tied around his waist, even though he knew his mother would kill him if she saw him and would tell him he was asking for a cold.

They had just reached the playground, where a concrete wall had an inspirational mural painted on it:
REACH FOR THE STARS!
But the word
STARS
was cramped, the second
S
hardly readable, as if the impossibility had crippled the painter and the message he was sending.

Raymond and Monroe were talking about who would kick ass in a fight—Batman or Daredevil. “Daredevil is so badass,” Monroe said. “He’s got supersenses, and Batman’s just a guy in a cool suit.”

“Batman’s got all that special stuff in his belt,” Raymond argued. “He’d whip out the batarang.”

“Yeah, and Daredevil would hear it whizzing through the air and would get the hell out of the way.”

“Daredevil’s
blind,
” Raymond said.

“And Batman’s dumb.” Monroe started laughing, and then so did Raymond, and then Monroe’s brother DeShawn came up behind them with one of his teenage friends and yanked Monroe’s lunchbox out of his hand. “Hey!” he cried. “Give it back!”

“Make me,” DeShawn said. He was smiling. Raymond noticed this, because DeShawn was
never
smiling. Something must have happened to put him in a very good mood, and maybe Monroe would tell him what that was later.

DeShawn tossed the lunchbox to his friend. Raymond tried to intercept it, monkey in the middle, but Monroe had a better plan. He hurtled toward DeShawn and tackled him at the knees.

They were wrestling on the ground, Monroe landing punches that DeShawn probably didn’t even feel. “Okay already,” he laughed. “Quit it.”

DeShawn stood up, pulling Monroe in front of him.

If only DeShawn hadn’t grabbed the lunchbox.

If only he hadn’t tossed it to his friend.

If only Monroe hadn’t been rolling around on the pavement with him.

If, if, if.

When the rusted Chevy screamed around the corner and the gun came out the window, they were aiming for DeShawn, but instead the bullet blew off the back of Monroe’s head.

There was a four-minute segment on the nightly news where Raymond’s name was mentioned. Thirteen gangbangers from the other side of Dorchester were arrested. The mayor came to Monroe’s funeral. After the service, DeShawn tried to talk to Raymond, but Raymond ran into the men’s room of the church and hid. Later, at home, Raymond’s grandmother promised him that Monroe was with the Lord, that he was watching over Raymond even now, as he was surely an angel by now. It had been two months, but Raymond still had questions: Could Monroe find him, now that he was in the middle of nowhere at camp? Could you shoot hoops in heaven? Had Monroe met God, and did He look like them? Did Monroe have a new, dead, best friend?

Raymond told Melody about how he’d met Monroe on the first day of kindergarten, and how Monroe had told him that he knew a good spot near a sewer drain to catch toads. He told her about how they kept a dictionary of all the cuss words they learned, hidden under Monroe’s mattress, so now Raymond didn’t know what had happened to it. He told her about First Night in Boston, and the angel. “I didn’t have nobody to hang with anymore,” Raymond said finally. “My mother thought if I came here, I’d feel better about myself.”

He could feel Melody’s eyes on him. She looked as if she’d taken a bite of something she wished she hadn’t. He remembered his grandmother telling him the story of Eve and the apple and the Garden of Eden, and he had always wondered if it was worth it, that apple, and whether knowledge tasted sweet, or sad, or bitter. “I guess,” she murmured, “that’s why
we
all come here, too.”

She reached out and squeezed Raymond’s hand.

Her palm was cool and dry, and her nails had tiny ridges in them, like record grooves. Melody flexed her fingers, and he could feel his own fingers move in response. It reminded him of being very small and crossing the street with his mother. For a long time, he’d believed that as long as he held on to her hand, that lifeline, he had nothing to fear.

He knew now that the world didn’t work that way, with talismans and magic. Bad shit happened—all the time. People lost their jobs, and dads went missing, and guns went off, and people got in the way.

Raymond had pictured sitting with Melody on this dock, with the sun caught in the web of a cloud, a thousand times. He had run the conversations they would have over and over in his head, until they were as real to him as any truth he’d ever told. But they had not gone like this. And she had not stared at him like that.

“Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop … looking at me that way.”

Raymond did not have the words for it, but he thought of what James had said, about Melody and the homeless kitten. She was a
lifeguard.
She rescued things that were drowning.

But what did that say about
him
?

“Raymond—”

He stood up, his hands fisted at his sides. “I don’t need saving,” he said, and he ran.

He lied again the next day and told Matthew he had stomach cramps and couldn’t go to swimming. This way, Raymond wouldn’t have to see Melody. He lay on his bunk while the rest of his cabinmates went to their own swimming classes and returned. There was an hour of downtime before dinner, called Reflection, which Raymond usually missed, because he usually stayed late and helped Melody pack up for the evening. During that period, the campers were supposed to wash up and think about God and things like that, while the counselors had an hour to themselves. But tonight, when James saw Raymond in the cabin, he jerked his chin. “You coming with us?”

“Where?”

“It’s a surprise,” James said. “But you ain’t seen nothing like this.”

He led Raymond and the two other boys through the forest where they had all gone camping a few nights earlier, past the stone-pile trail markings and the hollow oak that was home to a family of rabbits. “Okay,” he said, turning suddenly to Raymond. “You gotta be real quiet here.” Getting down on his knees, James motioned for the others to do the same. Raymond did, feeling wet moss grind against his skin. They wriggled through vines and brambles, and finally James held up a hand and pointed through a thicket of branches. Raymond hunched behind Winslow, peeking through the tangle of foliage to see a patch of grass covered by a blue flannel blanket, and Matthew lying naked on top of his girlfriend, Susannah.

Stunned into silence by Susannah’s moans, by the pale globes of Matthew’s bottom, the four boys held their breath. Then James snaked an arm through the bushes to grab a pink bra and panties, a halter top, tiny shorts. “Come on,” he whispered, and they bolted, dropping pieces of Susannah’s clothing here and there, like a fairy-tale trail back home.

When they reached the cabin, though, the boys drew to an abrupt stop. Waiting on the front steps was Melody. They froze, certain they had already been caught for spying on Matthew. “Raymond,” Melody said, as if he were the only one there, “I missed you at swimming.”

The other campers, recognizing their good fortune at not being singled out, hurried into the cabin and closed the door. “I was sick,” Raymond said.

“Well.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I wanted to give you this.”

She took a folded piece of paper from her shorts pocket. “Cullen Jones,” Melody said. “He won a silver medal in the Olympics in 2012. He holds a
world record
.” Melody handed him the paper, and for a moment their hands brushed.

Raymond didn’t notice the similar shapes of their fingernails, or the way his own palm was so light it matched the inside of hers. He just saw the contrast, brown to peach. He thought of his grandmother, who had once ripped out a whole row of her quilt because she had mistakenly placed a red flannel beside a calico print. “Don’t you see, child,” she had told him, “they can’t stand to be so close.”

“You’re not broken,” Melody said. “You’re not what needs to be fixed.”

Raymond opened the paper as she walked away. His eyes skittered over the words, which were still hard for him to read, settling instead on the picture. The famous swimmer was holding up his medal. But here was the thing: he was just as dark-skinned as Raymond.

The biggest event at Camp Konoke was the Color War. It had begun years before, when there were only ten campers—all from Dorchester. The counselors had pitted them against one another in a friendly series of Olympic games, not realizing that when the kids went back home, they’d still be competing—just not for trophies. Over the years—fueled by gang rivalries in the off-season—the fight had grown fierce. Blue campers snubbed Red campers in the mess hall. Red campers trashed the cabins of the Blue campers. The staff, in the spirit of sportsmanship, had turned a blind eye; and Raymond and his cabinmates—being among the youngest campers—had been insulated from the battle, until today.

The games included archery and track and field, a tug-of-war, and swimming races. The winners took home ribbons that were either blue or red, to match their team. Raymond’s cabin had been assigned to the Blue team, and Raymond was being counted on as the star of the swimming relay, just as Melody had predicted. He knew he could win, because he was the best swimmer in the beginner group, and he hadn’t even really given it his all. He wanted to see the look on Melody’s face when he crossed the finish line, the fastest by yards.

The day of the Color War, the Blue team lost in archery but won the 100-meter-dash. Swimming was scheduled as the last event before dinner, and Raymond changed into his swim trunks in the locker room and stretched, bending at the waist like he’d seen Melody do before she did her daily laps. James came up behind him and clipped him on the shoulder. “Red’s dead,” he sang. “We’re countin’ on you, man.”

Every camper had been grouped into a swimming heat by ability, and Raymond found himself in competition with an older girl. He walked down the length of the starting dock, from the beach all the way to the cordoned swimming area in the lake. He tested the water with his toes, waiting for the previous heat of swimmers to get out of the lap lanes, trying to catch Melody’s eye.

She was on the finish dock, fifty feet away. She stood beside the other lifeguard, the one with the strawberry birthmark on his shoulder. Melody gave Raymond a thumbs-up sign, and he jumped into the water.

Reverend Helm used a cap gun to start each heat. When Raymond saw it, his heart pounded a little faster. He covered his ears, and in his head he could still hear the sound of a real gunshot, how it was so much louder than in the movies and left you so deaf you couldn’t even hear yourself scream.

He saw the quicksilver flash of the girl’s feet in the lane beside him as she started to move. Raymond pushed off the dock with all his strength, churning his arms as if Melody was standing behind him, adding her power; as if he could propel forward fast enough to shove Monroe out of the way. He kicked and he pulled as his lungs fought for air and the currents made by the other swimmer threatened to sway him. Each time he stretched out an arm, it was a millimeter farther than he’d stretched before, and finally Raymond’s palm cracked down on the plank of the far dock that was the finish line.