Unconditional (4 page)

Joe Bradford?
I turned. Looked at the man.

Caramel-colored skin. Dark mop of hair. Handsome face.

Could it be . . .

“Joe Bradford?” I asked.

He turned, his face fully directed toward me, leaving little doubt. Those were his eyes, all right. Kind. Gentle. Full of grace. The mischief had been replaced by weariness, but they were his all the same.

“Yes.” His expression, or lack thereof, told me he didn't recognize me at all.

“It's me. Sam. Samantha Thomas.”

His mouth dropped open, and his brow rose. “Sam?” He chuckled as his arms reached for me, mine doing the same for him. We held each other, both laughing, both amazed by the moment.

“How have you been, girl?”

I studied his face. “I can't believe it's you.”

“What are you doing here?” When he saw Keisha's dried blood on my hands, he took them in his and said, “Are you okay?”

The nurse said, “This is the lady who brought the children here.”

Joe drew back. “You have
got
to be kidding me. Of all the people. Where you living at, girl?”

“About twenty miles out of town. And look at you. Samurai Joe, all grown up and living in the big city after all.”

“Yeah, something like that,” he answered with a half smile.

I realized the implication of his previous words, the ones he'd spoken before I'd interrupted him and the nurse. He was there about Keisha and Macon.

“Are Keisha and Macon your kids?”

He dipped his chin. “Well, now . . . that's complicated.”

The nurse leaned in. “I take it you two know each other.”

Joe looked from her to me. “This lady right here was my best friend when we were kids.” He reached for me again as the station phone rang. “Come here, girl.”

I stepped into his arms one more time. It felt good, being there. Being held. Especially by someone I loved and trusted, even if I hadn't seen him in forever.

“Station three,” the nurse answered. “Yes, sir . . . she's right here. I'll send her on down.”

I knew who it was. The detective, waiting for me downstairs. I prayed it wasn't Detective Miller. It shouldn't be. Should or shouldn't, I couldn't bear to see him again. Not tonight. Not
this
night.

“You got a real impatient detective down there,” the nurse said with a smile.

“I gotta go,” I said to Joe.

“Wait, wait.” Joe's hand touched my arm. “You got a card or something?”

For the second time that night, I reached into my bag and pulled out a card. This time, the opening was wide enough that I could see the barrel of the gun resting at the bottom.

“It's a little wet,” I said, removing the card. “Crumpled.”

Joe took it, reached over the counter and picked up a pink sticky pad. The nurse handed him her pen. I watched as he scribbled his name and address onto it, tore off the top sheet, and handed it to me. “You come see me if you can. We got a lot of catching up to do.”

Another invitation for me to return. Two in one night. Something inside me stirred. Something that felt a little like renewed purpose, but it was too early to be sure. “It was good to see you, Joe.”

“You too.”

I turned and walked away from my old friend, my eyes reading the address Joe had given me.

“You come see me, now,” he repeated.

I turned to look over my shoulder. Studying him, I could tell he really wanted me to do just that. Yes, purpose—a reason to keep going—might be what I was feeling after all. “I will,” I said.

And I meant it.

Chapter Four

On the way
home I thought about the day Joe and I met back at Hazelwood Elementary School. It was on a Wednesday, during lunch period. I don't know how or why I remember the day, but I do.

The third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes had just settled into place along the rows of bench tables.

I was different from most of the kids I went to school with. More of a dreamer. So I usually sat at the far end of the room, near the wall, keeping to myself as much as possible. Unfortunately, that day like so many others, Jimmy Legg had managed to sit across from me.

Jimmy was a bully. He had a head full of blond hair, which he wore combed back as though he were some kind of hoodlum from the 1950s. A Fonzie throwback from
Happy Days
. Of course, I didn't realize that then. I only came to understand it later.

We'd been sitting long enough for Jimmy to taunt me, to pick on me because I was snaggle-toothed and scrawny. Back then I thought he was the meanest boy in the world. Today I realize he may have been a little bit infatuated with me and had acted as boys will when they “like” a girl.

“Go away, Jimmy,” I said. “I don't want you to eat lunch with me.”

But before he could retort, our principal, Mrs. Gray, called for everyone to be quiet. I looked past the rows of students—each of the girls trying to look more like Madonna than the others, and the boys imitating Michael Jackson's style—to where she stood in front of the food line. Standing next to her, looking sad and scared, was a caramel-skinned boy with a darker mop of hair, bushy around his head with little ringlets sticking out here and there. He neither smiled nor frowned, and I couldn't help but wonder who he was and what he was doing at our mostly white school.

“Everyone,” Mrs. Gray called out, clapping her hands, waiting for the murmuring to die down completely. She placed her fingertips where a secondhand book bag hung from the boy's shoulder, as if she dared to only half touch him.

I raised myself slightly so I could see all of him. He wore a gold tee over a long-john shirt and charcoal-colored pants. In one hand he carried a rumpled brown paper bag, in the other a piece of paper. Probably his class schedule, I figured. From clear over where I was sitting, I could see it quivering next to his hip.

He sure looked funny standing there. No doubt he felt funny, too, as the only black child in a room full of whites. “Everyone,” Mrs. Gray said again, “this is Joe Bradford. His grandmother is the new custodian.” She swallowed hard, and her face pinched. She gave us that look that said she was about to make a new rule, one we'd better follow. “I want you
all
to make him feel welcome.”

No one said a word. They just stared at him and him back at them.

Mrs. Gray pushed him forward. “Run along and find a seat,” she said.

I didn't yet know a lot about race relations, or lack thereof, but even at eight years of age, I knew that wasn't going to be an easy task. The other kids started putting their lunch boxes and books wherever a space might have been for Joe to sit. He finally made his way to the back of the room, to the seat next to where Jimmy sat across from me. Jimmy turned, put his hand down between where he and his best friend, Bart Atkins, sat.

“Seat's taken,” he said.

I kept on looking at the new boy, this Joe Bradford, wondering what it must feel like to be new in a school, to be a different color from everyone else. I also wondered what kind of food he had in his lunch bag. My mama had packed Jell-O in mine, even though I'd told her a thousand times how much I didn't like it. No matter how many times I'd told her that what I really wanted with my turkey-and-cheese sandwich was potato chips, she always packed Jell-O.

I guess Joe had nowhere else to go. In spite of Jimmy's warning, Joe walked over and sat down there anyway. Next thing I knew, all the boys sitting on that side of the table had gotten up and left, which was fine with me.

Joe hung his head, resting it in his free hand, looking about as rejected and alone as anyone I'd ever seen.

I looked at the brown bag on the table, still gripped tightly in his other hand. The grand possibility of potato chips somewhere within the recesses of that bag kept me from being shy or silent.

“Whatcha got?” I asked.

He cocked one eye toward me.

“Got something to trade?” I continued.

“Oh.” He opened the bag, dumped out a sandwich bag filled with a fat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, another bag with what appeared to be a soggy dill pickle, and a bag of Golden Flake potato chips.

I felt hope rise inside. “You like Jell-O?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, how about my Jell-O for your tater chips?”

Joe's dark eyes considered my orange Jell-O cup, then roamed back to his bag of chips and again to my side of the table. “Okay.”

“By the way, my name's Samantha, but you can call me Sam.”

“Hey, Sam. I'm Joe.”

“I know.” When his brow furrowed, I added, “Mrs. Gray said so when you were up there at the front of the room with her.”

“Oh, yeah.”

We ate without another word.

At the end of lunch period, he smiled at me. “Maybe we can trade again tomorrow,” he said, standing and gathering his belongings.

I did the same, tossing empty sandwich and potato chip bags into my pink kitty cat lunchbox. “Okay,” I said. “It's a deal.” I reached my hand across the table. It was a daring thing to do. What little bit I knew about blacks and whites fell right into that category.

And I'm sure Joe knew it too. But he slipped his hand in mine, bringing them down one time before turning his hand so his fingers clasped mine around the back.

I learned a whole new way of shaking on a deal that day, and I never forgot it, even when making a deal with Macon.

A full moon
hung low over the barn, lighting the path as I pulled the old Ford truck beside it. I was still deep in thought, thinking about how—later that first day of our friendship, at the start of recess—Joe had been sitting outside on the playground, reading a Samurai comic book. When I saw him sitting on the bench reading, I called to him from the top of the steps. “Hey, Joe!”

He looked up and smiled. Waved back at me as I did the same. It felt good knowing I'd made a new friend, especially one who liked comic book stories. I already wanted to share with him some of my own drawings and stories. As I bounded down the stairs, Jimmy and Bart and some other boys came around the corner. Jimmy stuck his foot out, catching my ankle and hurling me forward. I hit the gravel, my arms thrown out in front of me, my long red hair flying. The rocks dug into my knees and palms. Bad as I didn't want to, I started to cry.

Joe was in front of Jimmy before I had a chance to get up. “Who tripped her?” he demanded.

“She's
your
girlfriend,” Jimmy shot back. “Why don't you make
her
tell you!”

I'd managed to stand by then and was making every effort to get out of the way. The boys had fisted their hands, and they circled each other, ready for a fight. My earlier hope now turned to fear, fear for my new friend. For what these boys—who easily outnumbered him—could and would do to him.

“Joe, no!” I said, but I don't think he heard me.

“I'm only gonna tell you this once,” Jimmy said. “And I'm gonna talk
real slow
so you can understand me. It'll be a cold day in Jamaica before some ni—”

Joe's fist cracked into Jimmy's nose so fast, no one saw it coming. Jimmy went down in an instant and, when he did, Joe was on top of him, pounding his fist into Jimmy's face. Everyone but me started yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” until some of the grown-ups came running over and separated the two boys.

The three of us—Jimmy, Joe, and me—got called into Mrs. Gray's office. She had me come in first. I remember how frightened I was, sitting across from that big desk, legs swinging from the seat of a chair three times too big for me. My knees were covered in bloody scrapes, the pads of my hands throbbing. She asked me to tell her the truth about what happened, and I did. I told her how Jimmy had tripped me and how Joe, my new friend, had come to my rescue. “I don't think Jimmy likes Joe, Mrs. Gray,” I said. “But you should know that Joe's a real nice boy.”

Mrs. Gray smiled at me. “I'm sure he is, honey. What I want you to do now is walk on down to the nurse's office. She'll put something on those boo-boos for you.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

I hobbled out of the room and into the wide hallway bathed in semidarkness and lined with lockers. Joe and Jimmy sat on a single bench with about four feet between them. I stopped long enough to look at Joe but not at Jimmy. “See you at lunch tomorrow?” I asked.

Joe gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah.”

I smiled back. “Don't forget my tater chips.”

“I won't,” he said.

And he didn't.

I pulled the
gun from the hobo bag and held it loosely in my hand as though I hadn't really expected to find it there. Light shining from the moon and the lamp over the barn door came together, illuminating the dark of the pistol's grip.

What was I going to do now? Try again? Here? In this truck? Billy's truck? It wouldn't be the same. Go back to the alley behind Murphy's? I'd have to wait another year for that to make sense, which was about as illogical a thought as any of the others I'd been having lately.

Keisha's blood had dried between my fingers and around my cuticles, and I could see it on the hand that was wrapped around the gun. How was it, I wondered, that those children had been out so late at night? And what were the odds of Keisha getting hit in front of my truck?

Billy's
truck. Always, always . . . Billy's truck.

What's more, what were the odds of her being somehow related to Joe?

What was it he'd said when I asked him about it?
That's complicated.

A stepfather, maybe? Or an uncle? Joe didn't have any siblings that I knew of, but Keisha and Macon could be the niece and nephew of his wife.
If
he was married. He hadn't said, and I hadn't asked.

I placed the gun back in the glove compartment, slammed the door shut, got out of the truck, and called for Billy's horse, who I could see stood nearby, by making kissing noises. She ambled up from the north side of the barn, her mocha-colored mane and tail shimmering in the moonlight. Just being near her made me feel that much closer to Billy.