Yard War (6 page)

He ran to her. What could be wrong?

She pulled him in close. I only heard “Now get on back to work.”

“What's going on?” I asked him when he walked back.

“My mama said you need to go see your mama, and I need to get back to work.”

Mama was pouring iced tea into some glasses on a tray.

“Listen, Trip, Meemaw's dropping by to show me some fabric.”

“Fabric?”

“Who knows, we might also talk about what kind of Halloween treats she's going to make this year.” She looked at me with her eyebrows up and her lips tucked in, like I was supposed to get all excited about Halloween treats. “Now I need you to—”

“Mama, Dee just won the game for us! How come he has to start raking again?”

“It would be best if Dee did what he was hired to do. Your grandmother does not need to see him playing football with y'all.”

“What would be so terrible?”

“What would be so terrible? Do you want to give her a heart attack? Now tell everybody to run along and go down to the Gibsons' and get Farish, will ya, honey?”

“This doesn't make any sense.”

“It makes sense that I am asking you to do something, Trip Westbrook. Now hop to it!”

I did what I was told, but I kept thinking, Heart attack? Meemaw is old-fashioned, but she's nice. She
and Papaw are always smiling at everybody. It would give her a
heart attack
to see Dee playing with us? She's the one who taught me that Jesus loves all the children of the world. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” Meemaw used to sing me that song and read me Bible stories and rock in her rocker by me until I went to sleep, which wasn't easy with all that creaking.

One night she told me to listen carefully, that she had something real important to tell me. She said that when she was a young girl, not even married to Papaw yet, she caught special pneumonia and nobody thought she was even going to live much longer. Then, one night when she was lying in her hospital bed, Jesus came to her standing in a cloud, and she promised Jesus if he would let her live, she would go to church every chance she got. Jesus said all right, and she got well the next day. And it was a miracle.

That's why we went to church so much.

Meemaw is president of the WMU, which stands for Women's Missionary Union. One time at a party, I heard Daddy say it stood for Wild-Eyed Matrons United, and it wasn't the hooch that was gonna kill Papaw, it was that good old-time religion.

I went out and sat on the front porch. Dee was raking hard. I didn't know exactly what to say to him, since I didn't know how to explain that it was okay for
him to play football with me and my friends but not if certain people were watching.

Finally I said, “Sorry you had to go back to work.”

He shrugged. After playing on the same team with him, it shouldn't have been so hard to think of something to say. Then I said, “So how come your name is Dee? Is that short for something?”

“My mama said she named me after the movie
Demetrius and the Gladiators.
She saw it right before I was born.”

“Why did she want to name you that?”

“Because none of the other gladiators could beat Demetrius. Couldn't anybody beat him. He killed three tigers with his bare hands. She said she wanted her little boy to be tough like that 'cause she knew I would have to fight for everything I got, like every colored boy.”

“You sure play football like a gladiator. Has she ever seen you?”

“I don't guess so.”

“Next time we'll tell her to watch.”

He looked at me like he wasn't so sure about there being a next time.

“How come your name is Trip?”

“My daddy is Samuel Thompson Westbrook Junior, which makes me Samuel Thompson Westbrook the Third, so they call me Trip, like ‘triple,' get it?”

“I get it.”

“Mama is Virginia Lynn McKenna Westbrook and my sister Ginny Lynn is named after her. Meemaw's name is Farish McKenna and my sister Farish is named after her.”

“Oh.”

“But it's hard to think about Meemaw having any other name besides Meemaw, you know?”

“Ain't got a meemaw.”

“You don't have a grandmother?”

“Or granddaddy either. Died before I was born. Don't even have a daddy anymore. He lives in St. Louis.”

I didn't figure he wanted to talk about that, so I didn't ask anything.

Mama came out to the porch.

“Did you get all cleaned up? Hey, Dee.” She smiled at him like “Isn't he cute?”—the way she smiles at a puppy.

Then she looked at the rose bed and the smile went away. She tromped down the steps and marched over to the rose bed and stood there with her hands on her hips. She reached out and tried to make the propped-up ones stand up by themselves, but they flopped over as soon as she let go. Then she dug around and picked up the ones I had hidden. I thought I buried them better than that.

“Trip Westbrook! Do you want to explain this?”

One hand was on her hip and one hand was full of broken roses. She was mad, mad, mad.

“What have I told you about getting into my roses?”

“Ma'am?”

“Don't you act like you don't know what I'm talking about.”

“Well, I, uh—you mean
those
roses?”

“You are cruisin' for a bruisin', young man!”

“Miz Westbrook,” said Dee. “It wasn't Trip that…”

I frowned at him and shook my head. When Mama's eyes get black like that, you do not want to be the reason. She was the kind of mad she gets when her day has been too busy with errands and projects and meetings, and she needed to lie down and take a nap a long time ago, but people would not let her take a nap and somebody, somebody was going to have to pay for this.

“He means we don't exactly know what happened, Mama. We don't exactly know who broke your roses. We tried to be so careful.”

“And those you propped up, you might just as well have broken off. They're not going to make it. Do you exactly know who bent them and then propped them up like that so I wouldn't notice, instead of telling me honestly what had happened?”

“Well…well, I was gonna tell you about it as soon as you got home.”

“Miz Westbrook, the truth is…” Dee still did not understand that he was in danger.

“The truth is that I did it, Mama. I couldn't stop running in time and ran in there and accidentally broke them and tried to hide it from you. I'm sorry.”

She stared at me and you would not have thought that I was her beloved firstborn, you would have thought that I was a redheaded stranger and the punishment didn't exist that was horrible enough for me, but she would invent it.

Probably the biggest reason that I'm a good kid is that I'll do anything not to make Mama that mad. The last time I saw her like this was a few months ago, when I rode on the back of a motorcycle. Daddy always said he would buy me a car when I got to college if I promised never to ride on a motorcycle. Mama told me he had a friend in high school who got killed in a motorcycle wreck, and that's why he felt so strongly about it. He also said he would pay me a thousand dollars when I was twenty-one if I never touched a cigarette or a beer until then. That part sounds like an easy thousand. But I have always wanted to know what riding motorcycles felt like. Mama and Daddy left for a party one Saturday afternoon, and I was hanging out in the yard and here came Johnny Adcock on his new Yamaha YM1, which he was almost old enough to legally ride. He said he would take me around the block.

I would see what it felt like and never do it again. Just around the block. It wasn't like I was driving it myself. Anyway, who would ever find out? So I got on the back and hung on to Johnny, and we took off around the corner. He opened it up all the way down Waynedale, and I was so happy I had made this decision.

Then, soon as we turned back onto Oak Lane Drive, even though they weren't supposed to be home until late, here came Mama and Daddy. I ducked as low behind Johnny as I could, but it was too late. They were standing in the driveway, waiting for me. Mama had forgotten a cheese ball for the party. So thanks to that cheese ball, I got into the worst trouble I'd ever been in and finally understood what God was trying to tell me:
“You will never get away with anything.”

Now Mama turned before she went back inside and shook the dead roses at me: “When Meemaw leaves, you and I are going to improve your understanding of ‘yard rules' and what happens to those who violate them.”

The chances of me ever playing football in the front yard again didn't look very good. Or of ever being let out of my room again.

I decided to stay outside until Meemaw came. Dee went back to raking, and we talked about school. He has a lot more kids in his classes than I do, thirty-five or forty, and the teacher has to spend so much time
making everybody act right, she hardly has any time left to teach anything. He said he didn't mind school, that he wanted to learn about stuff, especially arithmetic, which I personally cannot understand anybody wanting to learn about. He said he learned more from reading library books on his own than he did in class.

He asked me what seventh grade was like, and I told him I liked walking around on my own and having a lot of different teachers. But I was still getting used to how many more people there were at junior high. Plus, the PE classes are run by mean old guys with paddles. The meanest was the head football coach, Coach Montgomery, who had long teeth and a long nose. Stokes said it looked like a ski jump for flies. Coach Montgomery made us run laps until we collapsed on the track, and climb ropes with our bare hands until we had rope burns and couldn't hold on anymore.

When Coach Montgomery asked me why I didn't go out for football, and I told him about Mama wanting me to wait a year, he looked at another coach and laughed. He said, “Gotta wait till Mommy says it's okay? That boy doesn't want to play football.” What he meant was “You are a sniveling little sissy who doesn't deserve to go to my school, and I am going to hurt you every chance I get.”

It's bad enough the coaches make you run around for an hour and only give you ten minutes to take a
shower and get dry before your next class, but if you mess up the slightest bit or even if they just think you're not trying hard enough, they'll make you grab your ankles and give you some licks with those paddles just for the fun of it. They drill holes in the wood to make it hurt more.

“I had never even had a man teacher before this year, much less a mean man teacher with a paddle,” I said to Dee.

“Sounds pretty rough.”

Meemaw pulled up in the driveway in her brand-new Cadillac. The late-afternoon sun lit up her earrings and her necklace and her big smile when she leaned down to give me a hug. She's sixty-something, but I can see why people say she's still beautiful.

“How is my big man doin' today? Just getting so taaalll…”

Even though I see her all the time, she likes to look surprised and say how I'm getting so tall, like tall is the best thing anybody could possibly be. I wish I really was getting so tall, like Daddy. He says be patient.

Meemaw walked up the steps slowly, watching her feet.

“That's Dee,” I said, pointing.

“What, sweethaht?”

“Willie Jane's son.”

“Well, hello, Dee,” she said, laughing.

“This is Meemaw.”

Dee held up his hand and smiled.

“Dee's a good raker,” I told her.

“I can see that,” said Meemaw. “Don't woik too hahd, Dee.”

“He's a good football player, too,” I said, but she was already opening the front door and singing “Woo-ooo” like she always does instead of knocking.

Farish and Ginny Lynn and me sat in the living room with Meemaw and had a “nice visit.” We only have to sit there long enough to talk about something great we've done lately, and then we can go. Later, Mama called us back to the living room to say good-bye and Meemaw said, “Love ya good,” and hugged us and drove off.

Mama declared that she was going to take a nap before supper. So that was good. She might be in a whole different mood by the time we improved my understanding of yard rules.

The kitchen smelled like fried chicken, which is probably the best smell in the world, and also like turnip greens, which are slimy and stinky. Why do people pretend turnip greens are okay to eat? Daddy says they're good for you and puts hot sauce on his.

Willie Jane put on her sweater and called Dee into the house to say good-bye.

“Tell ya mama when she's awake that everything's ready, she just has to warm up the rolls.”

She picked up a sack of cantaloupes Mama had gotten for her at the farmers' market and said she would see us Monday.

Dee whispered, “Thanks for not telling your mama who tore up her roses.”

“Oh, that's okay,” I said. “You're too young to die.”

Then he held out his hand. It seemed kind of like out of a movie, this kid shorter than me trying to shake hands like we were grown-ups. I just looked at him for a second. But he kept it out there, smiling at me. So we shook.

—

I was reading about the Trojan War, but my mind kept wandering to new plays for the game next weekend when me and Dee would beat 'em again. When I glanced up from my book, Daddy was standing in the doorway, which can be a scary surprise because he fills up the whole space. He played basketball at Tulane.

“Hi, pal.”

Mama came up behind him and said they were wondering if we could “chat” for a minute. They came in and sat on the end of the bed. Here came the yard rules. I clenched my toes.

But they didn't seem mad. They seemed
sorry
about something. They hadn't said anything sad at supper. Maybe they wanted me to know before my sisters did. I had a sudden, terrible thought: Meemaw's dead!