The Rock and the River (2 page)

“I'm going to find the doctor,” Father said finally. His coattails flapped against my shins as he swept past me and out the door.

Stick flopped back against the pillows. Mama stroked his hair. Stick looked past her to me. “What'd you tell him?” he demanded.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“We saw,” Mama said, touching the edge of Stick's bandage. “From the podium, we saw.”

Stick pushed her fingers away. “I'm not sorry I went after them,” he muttered. “They were beating on innocent people. That old woman.” He closed his eyes and pressed his head deeper into the pillow. “How can
he ask me to just stand by and watch it happen?”

“Turn the other cheek,” Mama said softly. She ate up Father's words like candy, without question.

I had questions, like Stick. I just didn't know how to ask them.

 

Father, Mama, and I sat in the waiting room for hours. At some point, Ty and Jerry came and sat with us. I tried not to look at Father, but he was watching me. All my life he'd talked a lot about actions and consequences. I couldn't even imagine what he thought I deserved for leaving a demonstration without permission. The very fact that he hadn't said anything to me for several hours was a bad sign.

People came and went from the waiting room. Every once in a while, Father approached the nurses at the desk to ask about Stick. At first, they told him the doctors were busy with other patients and they'd be right with us, but eventually, it got so they saw him coming and got real busy real fast. What was so hard about stitching up someone's head?

I got up.

“Where are you going?” Mama said.

“Bathroom,” I said, but I didn't really have a destination in mind.

I walked past the nurses' desk and down the long hallway.
I strolled into the hospital gift shop. The man behind the cash register glanced up from his book and eyed me as I entered. I walked by a wall of get-well cards and a bunch of little baskets with
IT'S A BOY
and
THINKING OF YOU
balloons tied to them, then squeezed the foot of a bear with a heart sewn into its chest.

I stopped in front of a basket of fuzzy knit hats and mittens. The mittens made me think of Maxie Brown, the girl I might someday ask to be my girlfriend. If I could ever get her to say more than five words to me at a time. I thought of her standing in the schoolyard, her cold, bare hands balled up in fists at the ends of her sleeves. The sign on the basket read:
MITTENS
$2.50.
HATS
$4.00.

I stuck my hand in my pocket. I had a couple dollars on me, but I wasn't sure it would be enough.

“Put it back.” The voice startled me, and I turned. The old man behind the counter glared at me.

“What?” I said.

“I said, put it back.” He moved out from behind the counter and approached me, shaking his fist.

“Put what back?”

“Don't give me sass, boy. You think I can't see?” He came up and grabbed my wrist, yanking my hand out of my pocket. Two dollar bills and some coins dropped onto the floor as he pried open my fingers.

“I don't understand,” I said. I glanced over his shoulder at the door. “I didn't take anything.”

“Turn out your pockets, both of them.” I inverted the linings in my other pocket. The man frowned.

“All right, now, get your sticky fingers out of my shop, you little”—he called me a couple of names that would have had Stick tossing fists, or made Father turn cool and stoic as he walked away—“Get out before I call the police.” I stood there and took it.

I stared at my two dollars and change spread on the floor beside me, then at the purple mittens. Father would say, pick up your money, walk out right now, don't give this man the satisfaction of humiliating you, and take your business elsewhere. Stick would say, if you want the mittens, don't let this racist jerk stop you from getting what you want.

I bent over and gathered up the spilled cash. I took a deep breath as I straightened out. “I want to buy those mittens. The purple pair.” I pointed.

The man stood there sizing me up. I waited. I'd have to brush past him to get out of the shop, and I didn't want to get that close. The man picked up the purple mittens and pointed in the direction of the register. He made me walk in front of him until we got to the counter. He moved around behind it, keeping an eye on me all the while. He shoved the mittens into a small paper sack and placed it on the counter.

“Two fifty,” he said. I handed him my two dollars and counted out fifty cents. He recounted it twice, then pointed to the door. “Now get your thieving behind out of my shop, and don't come back here.”

I reached for the bag and cleared my throat. “Can I have the receipt?” I said. No way I'd let him accuse me when I walked out.

The man ripped the little piece of paper clear of the register without moving his eyes from me and I watched him tuck it into the bag. I swallowed the automatic “thank you” that formed in my throat and left the shop without another word.

In the hallway, I leaned against the wall until my heart stopped racing. I tried to breathe away the tightness in my stomach, but it was stuck there, like someone's fist. I'd forgotten what happens when you go someplace new. How careful you had to be. Why I wasn't allowed to go into the white neighborhoods without Father or Mama.

I was still shaking a little as I made my way back to the waiting room. Father leaned forward in his seat when he spotted me. “Sam?” He looked concerned. “You all right?”

“Fine.” I took my seat across from him. He watched as I folded down the top edge of the gift shop bag and placed it in my lap. I was sure he could see my hands trembling, that he could read what had happened by looking at my face.
But he didn't say anything more. He sat back, stroking his cheek with his fingertips and watching me with one of his thinking stares.

 

It was well after dark before they released Stick and all of us emerged from the hospital. At the curb, Jerry sat behind the wheel of our waiting car. Ty rushed toward us. Why?

A flashbulb exploded in my face. I threw up my arms. Questions burst like fireworks around us.

“Mr. Childs, who do you believe is responsible for your son's injury?”

“Will you try to find the men who attacked Steven and Sam?”

“Can you comment on your plans to respond to the incident?”

“Sam, Steve, what really happened out there?” One of the reporters leaned in close as he spoke. I could feel his breath on my cheek. My head filled with the sound of his camera
snap-snap-snapping
. Each flash blazed against my eyelids. Behind my closed eyes, the gift shop man's blunt fingers pointed, accusing me of being black. The man with the bottle still loomed in my mind, his sneer as sharp as the glass edges that had glinted in the sun.

Ty stepped between the reporter and me, steering me
toward the car. I tumbled into the backseat, right after Stick. Mama climbed in next. She slammed the door and held her handbag over the window to block the photographs. Father stood outside, Ty next to him, long enough to make a statement to the hungry newsmen.

Jerry glanced back from the driver's seat, his expression tense. We didn't used to have security for the demonstrations—Father didn't like the way it looked, like maybe he was afraid. But lately, there had been letters. Phone calls. Threats, more of them and harsher than the usual. I scrunched deeper into my seat thinking about the calls, especially. How scary it could be to pick up the phone and just hear someone breathing at the other end. Scarier than if they said something mean, because at least then you knew what they were thinking. Last week, Mama told me I wasn't allowed to answer the phone anymore, even if I was home alone. Especially then. I shivered. Today, I was glad for Ty and Jerry.

When the media moment ended, Father and Ty piled in and Jerry drove off. Ty checked the rearview mirrors repeatedly, making sure we weren't being followed. Jerry's wide shoulders hunched forward to make room for Father, who was sitting between them. We rode in tense silence, unusual for us. Ty was the friendly, chatty sort, even when he was working; not to mention Mama, who could carry on
a conversation with the car itself if she felt like it. But she sat quietly, balancing her handbag on her knees. Stick and I were in big-time trouble if not even Mama could think of anything to say.

None of the newspeople followed us. As we rounded the corner onto our street, I let out a huge breath. Home. Just seeing the house drew some tension out of me, though the windows were dark, the curtains drawn as if no one had been around for a while. In the deep evening shadows the siding paint looked gray instead of cream. Our plan to come home early had backfired completely.

We said good night to Ty and Jerry in our driveway. As we walked up the path to the porch, I had an odd urge to climb onto the long slope of the roof and lie there, alone and away from everything.

“Samuel, go to your room,” Father instructed as soon as we got inside. “Steven, couch.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I shuffled to the bedroom I shared with Stick and closed the door. Ten loose wooden building blocks lay scattered across my desk. I scooped them all up. It was definitely a ten-block kind of day. Breathing deeply, I forced myself to relax and steady my hand. Then I approached our castle.

The block castle towered over the foot of my bed, stretching so tall, it nearly touched the ceiling and so wide,
we could only partly open my half of the closet door. I cradled the blocks in my left arm, picking up one at a time to place it. One, at the base by the main entrance annex. Two, at eye level, completing the royal arch. Three, right at the corner by the bed, sticking off like a gargoyle. Four.

I used to build for fun, for the sheer pleasure of crafting a miniature warehouse, office, palace, stable, restaurant out of rubble.

Five.

Lately, it was more like a way to leave the real world for someplace better. Just for a minute, I could focus only on the tower, only on the placement of each block.

Six. Seven.

As I reached above my head to set a block near the apex, I had to take such care not to knock any walls over that there wasn't room for anything else in my head, no space to even breathe.

Eight. Nine.

From the living room, the sounds alternated between Father's low rumbling tone and Stick's occasional grunting response. I could hear Father speaking, but I couldn't make out the words. He never raised his voice, no matter how mad he got.

Ten. I held the last block, thinking of where to put it. The perfectly edged rectangle felt good in my hand. Familiar and
solid, almost big enough to cover my palm. We had some blocks that were cubes, and a few triangles for decoration, but mostly it was this kind. I bounced it on my fingers. Maybe I would save it for Stick.

I flopped onto my bed and closed my eyes, imagining the world inside our castle.

Stick and I used to lie on our beds after lights-out and play the game together, making up elaborate lives and characters, before we got too old to make-believe. My wall was covered with photos of famous buildings—the Wrigley Building, Marina City, the Egyptian pyramids, the Guggenheim Museum, the Taj Mahal, the palace of Versailles. The block tower could be any or all of them, and we had invented stories about the worlds that might exist inside each of their walls.

Stick pretended not to be as into it as I was, but he went along, adding pieces to the tower here and there when he felt like it. Anyway, he was the reason we still had the thing.

We'd started it when I was nine. I wanted to build a really big castle. Stick said okay, and we spent an entire day setting up an elaborate floor plan and building the base and everything. By the time we used every last block we had in the house, we had only built up a few inches from the ground.

“Let's build something else,” I'd said, ready to tear down the walls and start over on something more manageable.

“No way,” Stick had said.

“But we can't finish it,” I said.

“Sure we can, we just need more blocks.”

“From where?”

“I don't know. We'll get some.”

“That'll take forever.” I started to break apart the blocks, but Stick dragged me away, pulling me over by his bed.

“It'll be worth it,” he insisted. I didn't understand what he meant.

“Come on, let's go outside,” he'd said. So we went to play in the yard, and later whenever I mentioned tearing it down, Stick would say, “We're keeping it.”

Stick was always like that—stubborn and patient. A lot of things ended up going his way because I'd get bored with the fight and give in.

I opened my eyes and studied the tower, admiring the way it loomed over my bed. Stick had been right back then. It was the neatest project we'd ever worked on. Definitely worth it.

Stick entered the room, slamming the door behind him. Frames banged against the wall. Stick's waterfall poster trembled, making it look like the water was actively pounding the rocks. The block tower, too, seemed to leap in surprise.

Stick yanked open the closet door, his elbow jabbing near the tower.

“Watch it!”

“Oh, now he doesn't want it to fall,” Stick muttered. I slipped the last block under my pillow. Apparently he wasn't in the mood.

“How bad was it?” I asked. Stick shot me a look that made me want to crawl under the bed. “What did he say?”

Stick shook his head slightly but didn't answer.

“So, it's my turn now?” If I'd managed to forget reality for a second, I was fully back now.

Stick threw himself down on his bed. “No. You're off the hook.”

“Yeah, right.” I dragged myself up and trudged toward the door.

“Sam. You don't have to go out there.”

I turned around. Stick lay across his bed, eyes closed, arms above his head. The gauze covering his forehead had come a little loose. I could see the stitched black knots underneath, holding his cut together.