Yard War (15 page)

“I know. I'm sorry.” My eyes wouldn't stay open. “Tell him. Please. He can come over at least one more time.”

“I'll tell him, but you better not count on it. You better learn it now that the world doesn't want white boys and colored to be friends. And the older you get, the truer that's gonna be.”

“One day it will be different. When I grow up, I'm gonna put a commercial on TV that says: ‘Come to Mississippi: where anybody can be friends with anybody.' ”

She laughed a little.

“I hope you do. I hope you do.”

—

The phone kept ringing and only Mama and Daddy could answer it, and they were gone a lot, especially Daddy, so you just had to sit there and let it hurt your ears. Sometimes it was all day and sometimes only a few times that day, but it always rang at night. And as soon as you fell asleep, it would ring again. Daddy had
to keep telling us that we could not change our number and keep it a secret, because the hospitals needed to be able to reach him.

“Anyway,” he said. “We won't have to put up with hang-up calls or any of the rest of this bull crap much longer.” I had never heard him say “bull crap” before.

Mama picked me up from school and made me go to the Sunflower with her because it was so much easier to drive to the grocery store from school than to take me home first, and she was too tired to argue about it. I was too tired to argue about it, too. I never got enough sleep anymore, even with a pillow wrapped around my ears.

We drove home with more paper sacks than would fit on the backseat. I had some serious unloading to do. Mama let me do it all, too. The only thing she carried into the house was her purse.

“Hey, Farish!” I yelled. “Help me get these grocery bags!”

“Farish can't carry those,” Mama said.

“She can carry the lighter ones. Farish!”

We walked into the den and there was Farish sitting on the floor by the couch looking up at me, scared, with Ginny Lynn sitting right next to her.

“Why didn't you answer me?”

And there was Willie Jane sitting in the middle of the couch with Daddy's 12-gauge shotgun across her lap.

“What in the world…?” Mama said.

“Ain't nobody gonna hurt my babies,” said Willie Jane. “Ain't nobody gonna hurt my babies….”

“Willie Jane?”

She looked like she did when we went after that snake. Her eyes were scary. I would not want to be on the wrong side of those eyes.

Ginny Lynn whimpered and jumped up and hugged Mama's legs.

“They talked this time, Miz Westbrook,” Willie Jane said.

“What did they say?”

“They say better look out for the children, that they'd hate to see something happen to 'em. I almost fell out when I heard it.”

Willie Jane wasn't sure about the voice. She said maybe it was a Bethune and maybe not. I wish I had been the one to answer it.

—

Daddy came home and said he could tell the police were not taking him seriously. He demanded to speak to someone higher up this time, and got hold of a detective. The detective told Daddy not to worry, that with us getting so many prank calls all the time, this had to be a prank call too. And Daddy should report any further problems.

He went over to the Bethunes' after supper. I wished
he had taken a gun. When he came back, his face was red and his eyes were hard as rocks. Mama acted like they ought to go back into their room to discuss it, but he was too mad to care if we heard.

“I told him to stop the calls.”

“And?”

“Oh, he doesn't know anything about it! The liar. He was enjoying himself. He was having the time of his life. He's probably got his redneck buddies on call rotation.”

“Did he deny making the threat?”

“He denied everything. I told him if he or his half-wit boys so much as looked cross-eyed at my family, I would come back over there and shoot him.”

“Sam! No! Don't talk like that. I feel like I don't know you when you talk like that. We would leave it to the police if…if…”

“The police are worthless! How much more proof do you need of that?”

Farish was getting scared. I took her to the playroom and turned on the TV. Ginny Lynn was out there already playing with her Colorforms.

When I came back into the den, Daddy was saying he agreed with the detective that if anybody really wanted to hurt us, they wouldn't call and talk about it, they'd just do it. But we had to be careful.

“Let me go over there,” I said. “I'll dare Tim and Tom to come outside. I'll tell them if they lay a
finger on one of my sisters, I'll blast 'em with their own gun!”

“Of course you're not going over there, Trip.”

“I would, though.”

“I know you would.” He smiled like he was proud of me. “But I don't even want you leaving the backyard.”

“Aw, come on, Daddy!”

“Until further notice. I mean it.”

“I don't want to be stuck in the backyard. I'm not afraid of those guys. I promised myself I wouldn't chicken out, and now you're making me.”

“We need to know everybody's safe, pal.”

He put his arm around my shoulder.

“Why can't we do something instead of sitting here and taking it?”

“We're doing everything we can.”

“Can't walk around in my own neighborhood. On my own street. I am twelve and a half years old, for crying out loud.”

“Old enough to understand why,” Daddy said, and smiled like everything was going to be all right.

Farish and Ginny Lynn can't even go in the backyard. Mama walks them to their classrooms in the morning and picks them up from their classrooms in the afternoon. Mama says Willie Jane's main job now is to watch them, even if some rugs don't get vacuumed and some laundry doesn't get washed.

—

Daddy went to Kansas City for three days and when he came back, he said he had good news. He had found a house for us, a much bigger, better house, and we could move to Kansas City even sooner than he had hoped. The children had to help Mama and Willie Jane keep the house clean because it was time to get a real estate agent and start showing it to people. Soon there weren't gonna be any more people bothering us, he said, and everything was going to be great from now on.

I looked at Mama. How could she change her mind like this? She wouldn't look back at me, and then I knew that she had not changed her mind. She was “putting up a brave front,” like she had told me to do. She didn't have a choice anymore. She was with Daddy, no matter what.

Daddy showed us pictures he had taken of the new house with his new Polaroid camera. It was bigger than our house, with a balcony across the front and a circular driveway. The living room looked huge and so did the kitchen. The den had a big brick fireplace and built-in bookshelves. And there was a giant brick patio in the back.

Farish said she didn't like that house. “What about Willie Jane?” she asked.

“We'll make sure Willie Jane has another family to work for,” Daddy said.

“But we're her family.”

“You can still visit her when we come home to see Meemaw and Papaw. She'll be fine.”

“I just can't wait to plant some lantana all around that patio and jasmine on the trellis.” Mama sounded like she was making herself say it. “Trip, you'll have to help me.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Are we running away from the bad people?” Ginny Lynn asked.

Mama sat up straighter.

“We aren't running away from anybody, honey,” she said. “I want y'all to definitely understand that. We are moving to a better place. Daddy will have a better place to work, and we'll all have a better house, with more room for y'all to play in. The schools are a lot better, too.”

“But we've always lived here,” whined Ginny Lynn. “What's wrong with this house?”

“Nothing is wrong with this house, honey. But wouldn't you like a big house with an upstairs?”

“Will my room be bigger?” asked Farish.

“Everybody's room will be bigger.”

“Will my room be bigger?” asked Ginny Lynn.

“Lots bigger,” said Mama.

“Will it be upstairs?”

“Yes. Upstairs.”

“Hmm. I'll think about it.”

“Kansas City is a great town,” Daddy said. “There's so much going on up there. We can go to the Athletics baseball games. Real professional baseball. Wouldn't that be fun?”

“Baseball is boring,” Farish said.

“And, Trip, they have a new pro football team, the Chiefs.”

“I know,” I said, and tried to sound excited, even though I really like the NFL a lot more than the AFL.

“And Glen is a great guy,” Daddy said. “He has a little girl seven years old. Farish, you would have an instant playmate.”

“Y'all can move to Kansas City if you want to! I'm staying right here!” yelled Farish, and ran to her room.

—

The moving men were coming on Monday, only three days away. I would never live at 5445 Oak Lane Drive again. If I was ever going to get rid of that snake, that thing that had been alive in my head for almost two months, and maybe save the next kid who played in this backyard, it had to be now. I knew snakes were scarce in November, but I told myself maybe it might not be hibernating yet. Even though it was real cold earlier this week, it had turned warm again, and it had been mostly warm all fall.

I snuck up to the exact spot where I had seen it. My stomach clenched whenever I remembered almost touching it…but it wasn't there now. It had to be around here somewhere.

I held the hoe ready and walked from one end of the creek to the other, trying to see into the tallest grass at the edge without getting too close to it. I checked along the whole bank and didn't see anything. Then I checked it again, from the bridge all the way down to the big pine stump where Stokes's yard begins. All along the way, I swung the hoe into the grass near the water, where I couldn't see as good.

I stood there awhile staring at the creek, feeling dumb, but not willing to stop looking. I got so mad at the snake and mad at myself, I slammed the hoe into the top of that big old pine stump. It sank into the wood up to the top of the blade. I didn't know it was that rotten. I whacked it some more and felt a little better. I was about to bring the hoe down again when a thick slab of snake with brown bands and black bands and a triangle head twisted out of the top, darting his tongue at me and coiling up to strike.

I screamed louder than I'd ever screamed in my life, scooped up that snake with the hoe, and slung it into the creek. It slithered over the water to the opposite bank and lay there, coiled up and still. I waited for my heart to slow down and tried not to throw up.

Mama stuck her head out the back door and shouted
to me. I shouted back that everything was all right. I didn't want any help. It was up to me this time, and I knew what I had to do. I went to the bridge and walked over to Mr. Pinky's side of the creek.

The closer I got, the more I didn't want to get there. Why did it matter if I killed that snake now? It would make more sense to go on back to the house and let it lie. But I had to take care of this.

I tightened my grip on the hoe and slid down to where it should have been—but wasn't. I searched up and down the bank on both sides till I had to admit it had swum off down the creek.

I dragged my hoe up the yard. That snake had won.

W
illie Jane cried sometimes and didn't try to hide it. She said she liked the family Daddy had found for her, that they were a real nice family and would pay her good wages, but that didn't make our leaving any easier. I told her if it was up to me, we wouldn't be.

When Saturday came, I was sitting on my bedroom floor, packing up the last of my models and board games, when Willie Jane came back to my room saying she had a surprise for me.

“Hey, Trip.” It was Dee.

“Dee! You came! I…felt so bad about…I was hoping that…” I got tangled up in my words, and Dee and Willie Jane started laughing, and then I laughed too because I was that happy.

“Don't worry about it,” he said. He held out his hand for me to shake, and the clamp I had been carrying inside finally let me go. I reached around and hugged him.

“Good to see you, Trip.”

“Good to see you, too.”

We sat and talked for a while. He wanted to know what had been going on in the last few weeks, but I didn't tell him everything. I didn't want him to feel like he was the reason bad stuff had happened. We talked about how crummy the New York Giants were this year.

“Seven losses,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“The Rebels have lost a bunch of games, too. They need you to hurry up and get to college and be their quarterback. Then they'd win some games, all right.”

He didn't smile or anything.

“That's not gonna happen,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

Of course. Ole Miss doesn't have colored quarterbacks—they don't have a colored player on the team. Dumb again.

We couldn't make pancakes because everything in the kitchen was packed into boxes. Mama brought us breakfast from Primos. I asked Dee if he wanted to play Ping-Pong, and he said he hadn't ever tried it,
so we did that awhile and it was okay. We stayed inside the whole morning and on into the afternoon and watched TV and played Chinese checkers and more Ping-Pong—but we both knew the whole time what we really wanted to do was go out in the front yard and throw the football.

The only thing was, I had to ask permission first, and I really didn't want to give Mama another reason to worry. She was pretty well worn-down. There hadn't been any more threats, but Daddy still wanted us inside all the time. Plus, we had to keep everything so clean it looked like nobody lived here. The real estate lady had shown our house to a few people, but nobody wanted to buy it yet. Daddy said it looked like we might have two houses for a while.

The girls were gone to Meemaw and Papaw's all day so Mama and Willie Jane could get everything ready for the movers on Monday. Mama was sitting on the floor in Ginny Lynn's room, boxing up dolls and games. I took a deep breath and stuck my head in the door and tried to make it sound like no big deal:

“Hey, did you know Dee came over?”

“How's ol' Dee doin'?” She had a drop of sweat running down her cheek and was barely listening to me.

“He's fine. We're gonna go out and throw the football a little bit, okay?”

She stopped what she was doing. She was listening now.

“The ground's still wet.”

“We don't mind.”

“Looks like it might rain some more.”

“That's okay.”

She sat back on her heels and wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“Well, what the heck. I really do not care what the neighbors think at this point.”

“Thanks, Mama.”

“Your daddy's pulling his last shift at the hospital and he might have something to say about it when he gets back, so y'all don't—”

“Yes, ma'am.” I was already halfway out the door.

We stood at either end of the yard and threw for a while. Then I started running some routes where I would charge off the line of scrimmage and cut in real hard. Dee hit me in the breadbasket every time. I ran some routes all the way down to the other end of the yard, and every time I looked up, the ball would float right into my hands. The unstoppable combo was back in action.

I caught one on the driveway and turned around and yelled “Touchdown!” and there were Stokes and Andy.

“Hey, Trip,” Stokes said.

Dee walked over.

I hadn't seen Stokes in a while. He kept looking at
me and then down at the driveway. Him and Andy both looked like they were trying to say something.

“I guess you know we're moving tomorrow,” I told them.

“We know,” Stokes said. “Listen, you remember that time you and your dad came over and asked if we knew anything about your mailbox getting blown up?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I did know something.”

“What'd you know?”

“I knew that me and Andy blew it up.”

“You—you what?”

He looked down at the driveway. “I've been meaning to tell you since I heard y'all were moving.” Then he looked back at me. “We didn't do it to make you move away. Everybody kept saying how y'all were so bad for the neighborhood, and…”

“We started to believe them,” Andy said. “And it was fun to blow something up.”

“Yeah,” Stokes said. “But we're real sorry. We thought maybe if y'all knew how sorry we were, you wouldn't move.”

I opened my mouth but couldn't think what to say. I had to wonder if he was making this up like he made so much other stuff up. But why would he? Then I thought about how I might never see him or Andy again after today.

“You…you scared my whole family.”

They looked at each other and Stokes finally said, “We're real sorry.”

“Well…y'all wanna get up a game?”

Andy said we needed more people, and they called Calvin and Kenny. We tossed the ball around, and I told Stokes about the snake, and he said everybody knows cottonmouths like to hibernate in pine stumps. I wished I had known it.

Pretty soon Kenny showed up, then Calvin. He said he told his mom he was just coming over here to say good-bye. I said we better get started because there was no telling how long we had to play before the grown-ups called it off.

—

It was me, Dee, and Kenny versus Calvin, Stokes, and Andy, just like the first time. I said our team was the Rebels, like always, and Calvin said their team was the Stampede. Andy flipped his buffalo nickel and I called tails. Tails it was.

Dee stripped down to his new T-shirt with no holes and took off his shoes. Calvin set the ball on his tee and backed up to the rose bed to get a good running start. Andy and Stokes lined up with the ball. Calvin made his angry bear face and accidentally cut a big one while he was running up to kick the ball. After that, we called them the Farting Stampede.

It was the same offensive shoot-out we had before. Dee was hitting me for touchdown after touchdown, but Stokes kept his team in the game. He would either complete it to Andy or dump it off to Calvin or keep it himself for a first down and they scored just as much.

Daddy pulled up in the driveway and got out of his car. I ran over to try to explain, but he waved me back and said he was too tired to worry about anything and needed a nap. I told everybody we had to keep the noise down.

After a while there was a sprinkle, and Willie Jane came out and asked us if we didn't have enough sense to come inside. We told her the rain made it more fun. I saw her keeping an eye on us through the living room window.

Other people were watching, too. Word must have gotten around. Mrs. Sitwell watched from her front window. Mr. Nelson watched from his open garage. Cars came by slow, just like before. Then the beat-up white truck drove by with Tim and Tom. I thought at first they were stopping, but they just slowed and then drove on.

“Did you see that?” Dee said. “Those guys.”

“I saw 'em,” I said. “The police have been to their house, and my daddy has been to their house, and he said if they tried anything, he would shoot 'em. They're not gonna mess with us.”

It was Rebels 28, Farting Stampede 28, and we had third down deep in our own territory.

Dee stood behind Kenny to take the snap. I lined up on the far right. Andy was covering me.

“Hut one! Hut two! Hut three!”

Dee backed up with the ball and pumped his arm toward me. I kept running. When I looked back, he had passed it to Kenny and Kenny was trying to pitch it back to him, but Calvin knocked the ball down. Dee scooped it up quick. Andy lost his footing on the wet grass, I cut hard across the middle, and Dee threw it right into my hands.

Stokes dove for me and missed. I carried it into the end zone, threw it in the air, and yelled, “Woo-hoo, mercy! Rebels wi—”

“Hey, jigaboo!”

Tim and Tom came around the Nelsons' hedge. Tom had his bat and there were more guys behind him. I couldn't believe this was happening again on my next-to-last day in the neighborhood.

I wanted to get inside quick—but something stopped me. This was my yard as long as I was standing in it. I had let Dee down before, more than once, but I would not let him down again. I would not spend the whole ride to Kansas City remembering how I had chickened out.

I turned around and took a few steps toward them. “Hi, Tim. Hi, Tom.”

“Did y'all want to play?” asked Stokes. “We could pick new sides.”

“What's your name, boy?” asked Tim, pointing to Dee.

“His name is—” started Stokes.

“My name is Demetrius Washington,” Dee said. Loud.

“De
me
trius!” They looked at each other and hooted.

“He goes by Dee,” I said, and wished I hadn't, because it sounded like I was apologizing for his name.

They all laughed. “I want to know what the hell he's doing here,” said Tom. “I told you what would happen if I saw him in this neighborhood again.”

“Dee can play!” I said.

“He ain't gonna play,” Tom said.

“He can play better than you!” I yelled.

My hand curled up in a fist without me telling it to. I didn't care if there were more of them than us or if they were bigger than us. I didn't care if it was all-out yard war.

Stokes pulled me by the shoulder and looked at Tom with his eyes wide as they would go, like he needed to tell him something real important:

“Look, y'all, I'll grant you, it looks a little…different, this colored kid playing football with us, but he's the maid's boy, see, and we're letting him play with us because…because Trip's dad is in there trying to take a nap, and he said he wanted everybody out of
the house. He hates any kind of noise when he's trying to sleep. He can't stand it. If y'all keep on making all this racket, you're gonna wake him up and have the wrath of a hundred demons comin' down on you.”

“What are you talking about?” Tim curled up his lip.

“Listen, I've seen it,” Stokes said. “Me and Clifford Sims were spending the night with Trip, and Clifford got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when he flushed the commode, it woke up Dr. Westbrook and he was so mad, he jumped out of bed and went after Clifford and threw him over a coffee table and broke his head open in three places. They had to take the poor guy to the emergency room.”

“That's a bunch of bull,” Tom said. “Clifford Sims doesn't even live here anymore.”

“Why do you think he moved?”

Stokes could tell a great story, but I couldn't let him tell this one.

“No! It's not true what he's sayin'!” I said. “Dee's playing football with us because we want him to. And you don't have to worry about my daddy.” I looked him hard in the eye. “You have to worry about me.”

“What you gon' do about anything, Dipwad Westbrook?” said Tom, and he shoved me so hard I almost fell backward.

Daddy always said never be the one to start a fight, but always be the one to finish it, and for that, he
recommended a hard sock in the nose. Well, they had started this fight.