The Liberation of Gabriel King (10 page)

I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” I said, even though I still didn’t know what I’d gotten wrong about it. Mr. Wilson set down his fork.

“Oppression is when you’re put down,” he said. “It’s when you don’t have the freedom to be who you want to be because someone else doesn’t believe you should have that freedom. Oppression is one person keeping down another person because of the color of his skin, or the language he speaks, or the religion he practices.”

Mr. Wilson was starting to sound like a preacher again. He was getting louder and taking up a rhythm, like he did when he was praying. It was like being at church only I was getting my own personal sermon.

I listened real careful and tried to think if I knew what Mr. Wilson was talking about. At first I thought I didn’t, but then I remembered Pop’s story about Jimmy Carter and the White
Citizens Council. Only this time I thought about it in a different way from how I’d thought about it the first time. This time, instead of thinking about what happened to Jimmy Carter, I thought about what it must have felt like for the black people in Plains who had a whole group forming against them. I bet they felt some oppressed, and they must have had to be real brave.

I told that to Mr. Wilson and he looked surprised.

“Gabe,” he said, “that’s exactly right.” He looked at Terrance across the table, but Terrance only snorted like he didn’t care what I’d said.

Mrs. Wilson cut me an extra piece of corn bread. “I think we’ve got ourselves another Peace Warrior,” she said, winking at Mr. Wilson.

No one had ever called me that in my whole entire life. I wondered if a chicken could really become a warrior, but Frita grinned like it was already true.

“You can join our group,” she told me, “just like me and Terrance.”

I looked at Terrance, but he didn’t look too excited about that idea. He got up from the table and took his plate into the kitchen.

“Can I be excused?” he asked, but he said it after he’d already gotten up, and then he left even though Mrs. Wilson didn’t answer. She sighed.

“Don’t mind him,” she said, dishing everyone some more corned beef.

I stared down the hallway where Terrance had disappeared, but Mr. Wilson poked me in the stomach.

“A warrior’s got to eat,” he said with his mouth full, and it was okay because I suspected Mr. Wilson was a warrior too, and sometimes warriors have to talk with their mouths full.

A
FTER DINNER, WHEN WE WERE DOING THE DISHES
, F
RITA WANTED TO
know if I was still scared of Terrance. She said it was important because being scared of people was the worst kind of scared, and if I was going to get to the fifth grade, we had better get this one right. I thought it over extra hard, then I told Frita I might still be the teeniest bit afraid.

“Well, how come?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I dunno. He’s pretty grumpy all the time and I don’t think he likes me any. Plus, he beats on you a lot. How come you’re not scared of him?”

Frita gave me a funny look. “Scared of Terrance?” she asked. “He’s not scary. He just beats up on me ’cause I like it, and he’s grumpy all the time because he doesn’t want to go to college, but most of the time he’s okay.”

I wondered if that was true, but Frita put down the last plate and studied me hard.

“We’ve got to fix this,” she said. “You need yourself some insight.”

I groaned. If insight meant looking in at something, I was pretty sure I could do without it. Didn’t seem like I ought to
get any closer to Terrance than I already was. But Frita latched onto my sleeve and pulled me down the hall.

When we got to Terrance’s room, she pushed open the door and went straight in without knocking.

“What are you doing?” Terrance growled, like we’d barged in on something top secret. I turned around and started to back out, but Frita stayed put. She also kept her grip on my sleeve, so I was like one of those cartoon characters running in place.

“Gabe’s afraid of you,” she said, just like that. I turned about five shades of red and I could feel all that color creeping from my neck to the very tips of my ears.

Terrance laughed. “Good,” he said.

That’s when Frita started to cry, only it wasn’t real crying, it was fake crying—I could tell—but Terrance didn’t seem to know the difference. He was sitting at his desk, reading a book called
What Should I Do With My Life?
First he stopped reading, and then he glanced at me. I would have bolted if it hadn’t been for Frita’s tight grip.

“Quit that,” he said to Frita, but he didn’t say it mean. She sniffled.

“I won’t,” she said. “Gabe is my best friend and you’re mean to him. He thinks you hate him.” She threw herself onto Terrance’s bed and muffled her face in his pillow. Terrance just sighed and picked Frita up by the ankles so she was hanging upside down.

“Come on, Frito,” he said. “I don’t hate Gabe. He’s a twerp is all. Quit it.”

Terrance was trying to sound tough like he usually does, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. His voice was soft instead of rough. He swung Frita up in the air and dumped her on his bed. Frita stopped crying.

“Tell Gabe you like him.”

Terrance made a face, but Frita looked at him with extra-big eyes and stuck one lip out. Terrance glared at her, then at me.

“You’re okay, Twerp,” he said.

“Tell him he can be a Peace Warrior, like us.”

Terrance snorted. “He can try,” he said, like he didn’t believe it, but he didn’t say it mean.

“Tell him he can sit on your bed,” Frita said. Then she giggled, which gave everything away. I could tell Terrance was catching on. He looked at Frita, then back at me, and for a second I thought he was going to pound me for sure. He lunged right toward me just like he lunged toward his punching bags, but then he picked me up, flipped me over, and swung me on the bed, like he’d swung Frita.

“Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Sit on the bed if you want.” Only this time he was
almost
laughing. All the color drained from my face, then filled back in again. I landed on the bed with a bounce. Maybe Frita was right. It was kind of fun getting tossed around like that.

Frita hopped off, but Terrance grabbed her round the waist and flung her up again.

“Come on, Frito. You said you wanted to sit on my bed. Go ahead. Put your stinky, dirty feet all over it.”

Frita was giggling something fierce now and I slid off the bed purely on accident. Terrance grabbed me up like I weighed nothing and threw me in a heap on his pillow.

“You gotta stay there now. Frito says you want to sit on my bed, so you better sit on my bed.”

Frita hopped off again and he flung her back on, and then we both hopped off and he caught one of us in each arm and flung us both.

“I’m twerp lifting,” he said. “How much you weigh, Twerp? Eighty pounds? I bet I could bench-press eighty pounds.”

Terrance picked me up and pretended like he was lifting a real heavy weight. Frita screamed and knocked him in the stomach with a pillow. Terrance said “Oof” and then he started to topple while he was still holding me in the air, and I screamed because I thought he was going to drop me for real, only he didn’t and next thing you know, me and Frita were both pounding him with pillows.

That’s when Mrs. Wilson came by and stood in the door. “
Mmm mmm mmm
,” she said, shaking her head, but she was smiling too, like everything might turn out okay after all.

I
T WAS ON ACCOUNT OF
T
ERRANCE THAT
I
CAME UP WITH MY IDEA
about Mr. Evans. Me and Frita were on our way back from town the next afternoon when Frita brought him up. We were walking along the old dirt road through clouds of hot, dry dust, and I could barely see Frita through the haze, but she was talking real steady, so it didn’t matter.

“You think Mr. Evans is mean as he seems?” she asked. “Because I saw him in town the other day and he was talking to Mr. Al and he didn’t seem so bad, but I don’t know….”

Usually I let Frita ramble on, but I was feeling pretty good about me and Terrance, so I started thinking.

“You’re pretty scared of him. He’s on your list, isn’t he?” I said.

If I wasn’t Frita’s best friend, she might have socked me in the jaw. A body didn’t accuse Frita Wilson of being scared without a dang good reason.

“You’re scared of him too,” Frita pointed out. “And besides, my daddy
told
me to be scared of him. I’m
supposed
to be.”

“Thought you said this was serious business,” I said,
“and that serious business meant we couldn’t always listen to our pops.”

Frita frowned, but I kept right on going.

“Maybe you should try and talk to him like I talked to Terrance. See how great that turned out?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Frita said, but she didn’t look so sure.

“How come?”

“Because Terrance is my brother, and Mr. Evans is…”

“Well, he’s an adult, ain’t he? How bad can he be?”

Frita didn’t say anything. I knew she was thinking about him calling her that name on Moving-Up Day. I’d thought of that too, a whole bunch of times, and I sure wished he could take it back. Maybe Mr. Evans wished the same thing.

“Maybe he’s sorry for calling you that name,” I said. “He was probably just mad about you and Duke fighting, like you were mad at me for killing Gilligan. That’s what you could talk to him about. You could tell him you’re sorry, and that you were just sticking up for me, and then you could ask if he’d talk to Duke so he wouldn’t be so mean next year. I bet he’d do it too, because that’s what pops do.”

Suddenly I felt like a real Peace Warrior. I was going to make peace between Frita, Mr. Evans, me, and Duke all at once and then we really would cross everything off our lists by the Bicentennial.

But this time it was Frita who didn’t look so sure.

“When would I talk to him?” she asked. “I can’t just knock on the trailer door or else Duke and Mrs. Evans will be there.”

This was a good point, but my plan was growing bigger in my mind.

“You can talk to him at the fireworks. He’ll be there for certain. It’ll be the perfect time because there will be all sorts of other people around, so if he’s mean, he can’t do anything. But if he’s not, you’ll find out and you can cross him off your list. Then we’ll be completely brave, just like you said.”

“I guess it’s an okay plan,” Frita said.

“It’s the best plan ever,” I told her. “Just wait and see.”

*   *   *

When you’re waiting for something special, time slows down to a crawl. I could hardly wait for the fireworks.

Frita’s daddy was holding a special prayer service that night to pray for our country, so he agreed to let Frita stay over at my house. Pop set up the tent and laid out our sleeping bags, and Frita came over extra early for dinner. We sat in the living room to watch TV and Pop didn’t even get riled up because the news was all about the celebrations going on around the country. They showed the tall ships lining up in New York Harbor and a place called George in the state of Washington where they’d made a sixty-foot cherry pie. I was hard-pressed to say where I’d have rather been.

When dinner was ready, Momma called us in to eat. Usually Frita was the first one to the table because Momma made stuff Frita never got at her house, like macaroni and cheese from a box, and hot dogs boiled on the stove.

Tonight we were having spaghetti with salad and Wonder Bread. Momma even made blueberry pie for dessert so we’d have something red, something white, and something blue. But Frita didn’t hardly seem to notice.

I wondered if she was thinking about Mr. Evans. I was real excited for her to cross him off her list, but when I asked if she was ready, Frita just shrugged. Then Momma had to ask her three times to pass the spaghetti. She was so un-Frita-Wilson-like it made me downright uncomfortable.

By the time we walked into town, I was getting a nervous feeling in my gut. Things were pressing in again.

When we arrived, the lawn in front of the town hall was full. There was a podium set up in the front all decorated with paper-bag lanterns and American flags, and the mayor was making a speech about the history of our country and the history of Hollowell. He kept talking about progress and how we’d made so much of it. I didn’t pay attention. I was watching the people selling peanuts and flags.

“Want an American flag?” Pop asked me and Frita. Momma gave him the look that said
We ain’t got the money for that
, but Pop leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

“This occasion only comes once every two hundred years,” he said, and then he bought two little flags with
1776-1976
stitched on them—one for me and one for Frita. He also bought us each a bag of boiled peanuts.

“Go have some fun,” he said, swatting me on the behind. “But come back for the fireworks. Momma and I will be right here…”

Me and Frita took off. We wove in and out of the crowd and ate our peanuts over by the Revolutionary War reenactment. Only Frita gave most of her peanuts to me.

“Don’t you like ’em?” I asked.

“They’re okay,” she said, but she didn’t sound like it.

We watched the guys dressed up in old uniforms pretending to be Redcoats and farmers. Then, when that was over, we listened to someone else making a speech, but that got boring.

“Think we should go find Mr. Evans?” I asked. We were sitting on the grass near the podium.

“In a bit,” Frita said. She was pretending to be real interested in the speech.

“How ’bout now?” I asked a while later.

“Shush,” Frita said. “Aren’t you listening?”

I picked at some grass.

“It’s getting darker,” I said. “They’re going to start the soon, and then how will you find him?”

Frita sighed. “I know where he is,” she said, and she pointed to some men near the podium. Sure enough, there was Mr. Evans, Mr. Buselby, and Mr. Carmen standing in a clump, just like sixth-graders.