A Heart Divided (15 page)

Jack steered the Jeep back the way we’d come. But at a fork in the lane, he veered left. “Detour. You mind?”

“We’ll miss the kickoff.”

“This is more important.”

What could be more important to him than football? We bumped down what looked like a cart path overgrown with weeds. Finally, the headlights illuminated a tumbledown cabin nestled in the woods. Next to it were the exposed foundations of some other small structures. Jack’s headlights beamed at the cabin.

“Where are we?” I asked. But suddenly, like a fist to the gut, I knew. It was just as Mrs. Augustus had told me. “It’s slave quarters.”

He nodded. “Most rich Southerners had slaves. At the start of the Civil War, there were as many black slaves in this county as there were free whites.”

“Unreal.”

“That time my mother made me write down the names in the mausoleum? She had me copy them into the back of the family Bible. The names of Major General Redford’s slaves are listed there. All forty-two of them.”

He kept his car lights on so we could see, and we went into the cabin. It was empty. I wondered who had lived there, who had suffered or died there. “Your mother should tear this down, Jack.”

“My great-granddaddy did, the others. But not this one.”

“Why?”

“Tearing it down wouldn’t change what happened.” He ran a finger along the rough-hewn logs that formed the cabin walls. “I never brought anyone here, Kate. Until now. Not even Sara.”

“Why?”

“Too close to the bone, maybe. Besides, her family has its own skeletons rattling around in the battlefield cemetery. But with you…” He puffed out some air and ran his hand through his hair. “People throw around the words ‘I love you’ until they don’t mean anything. I never said it to
anyone until I said it to you. But what I feel is bigger than… It’s like the words can’t even hold it all.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Me too,” I whispered.

“So I want you to know, Kate. Everything.”

I nodded.

“All my dreaming … wanting to be an actor … someone I’m not… maybe it’s just fear that I can’t measure up.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m ashamed that my ancestors owned slaves. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still proud of them, because I am. They were honorable men, for a different time. And they put love of country ahead of whatever they wanted for themselves. Can you understand that? Can you?”

This was where Jack came from, where turning away from service was like turning your back on the family faith. I got the unspoken message: If I couldn’t accept that, then I couldn’t really accept him.

three touchdowns. Chaz’s house was packed for the victory party, and the spirit was infectious. A boy standing on the living room couch led us in a cheer so loud they must have heard it back in Englecliff. I shouted along with everyone else, figuring what’s the harm? After all, the way
JUST SAY NO
buttons were outnumbering battle flags, it
looked like Redford High School would soon have a new team name and emblem. Besides, football was a unifying force. All the black players were at the party with their girlfriends, and they were bellowing along with everyone else.

Sara was there. She ignored me. But Jack’s other friends were coming around. Tisha enlisted my help with a drunken girl, hysterical over a fight with her boyfriend. After the girl cried herself out, we found her a ride home. Even Chaz made an effort. After I congratulated him on the touchdown pass he’d caught and made reference to how it must have been divinely inspired, he told me that if I made “his boy Jackson” happy, by God, he was happy for both of us. Then, to Jack’s delight, he swallowed me up in a bear hug.

Clearly, Chaz was starting to accept me. I thought maybe I should interview him for my play. I’d done a half dozen more interviews. Meanwhile, the local media began to cover the upcoming vote. Waiting for the Strikers game to start on Saturday, I read the
Tennessean.
It was full of vociferous letters to the editor about Redford, some for the flag, some against it.

Saturday night, Jack and I stayed late at Peace Inn. Around two in the morning a teenage girl with a black eye showed up. I called the police, showed her where the shower was, got her some clean clothes from the clothes box, and found her an empty bed. When she took off her jacket, I saw she had the same tattoo on her bicep as Ron Bingham.

The next day, we were at the Peace Inn again, helping
the latest round of temporary residents prepare a spaghetti lunch, when Jack’s mother appeared on the local TV news. Representing the Redford Historical Association, she told a reporter that the Confederate battle flag had never been intended as a symbol of racism, and that bigots had simply usurped it. Half the kids we were with were black; they snickered at the TV as they cooked.

Very late that afternoon, Jack introduced me to yet another of his favorite spots—the top of Redford’s water tower. The trick, he said, was not to look down as you climbed. But I was still petrified. Once we’d reached the flat summit, though, it was worth it. The setting sun shimmered on the horizon, and the late-October air had a definite chill. When Jack held me, I felt as if we were suspended in some magical place where only the two of us existed.

Maybe it was that magic that made me start to speculate about our future. I thought aloud about how next year I’d return to Englecliff High as a senior and have my shot at Showcase. How Jack could start his freshman year at Juilliard. Then, after I graduated, I’d go to NYU, and we’d get an apartment together in Manhattan. I’d write plays and Jack would be in them. We’d be so happy.

He didn’t say a word. Which made me think that maybe I was being incredibly presumptuous. “I swear, I’m not trying to talk you into anything,” I added hastily. “But I don’t think doing the right thing … should have to mean giving up your dreams.”

He gazed into the sunset, as if seeing our future just beyond the horizon. He said he’d make his mother understand that his dreams were different from hers. He said so long as we had each other, we had everything. He said he loved me. The sun disappeared, night fell, and he kissed me until the light of all the stars was inside me. Together, we were above the fray. We were invincible.

It happened three days later, on Wednesday.

If I hadn’t promised Tisha the history notes she’d missed because of a doctor’s appointment, I would never have known. Her locker was in the high school’s new wing. So when the final bell rang, I trucked down there—the opposite direction from where I usually met Jack after school. In this wing, on Wednesdays, representatives from various colleges and universities set up shop. Seniors could get excused from last period to go hear the rap on why they should attend whatever school was recruiting that day.

I’d already passed two classrooms filled with students and recruiters when what I’d seen on an easel outside one of them registered in my mind. I stopped, then backtracked. There was the hand-lettered sign.
THE CITADEL, CHARLESTON, SC.

I peered inside. Two young men in crisp gray military uniforms stood in front of a white board, speaking to a small group of seniors. Chaz was front and center. And next
to him was Jack. The boy who had spun dreams with me of a life together in New York.

Jack the fraud. Jack the liar.

The recruiters must have just been finishing, because kids were standing and gathering their books. I watched Chaz approach the men to ask a question; one of them gave an animated answer. Then Chaz and Jack headed toward the door. And me.

It was obvious from Jack’s expression that he hadn’t planned for me to see him there. Chaz, who sported a Confederate flag pin on his shirt, seemed oblivious to the tension. “Yo, Kate-date. You’re in luck. We just found out that Yankee girlfriends don’t need a passport at The Citadel dances.”

I didn’t laugh.

“These are the jokes, girl!” He nudged me playfully. Finally, he seemed to get that something was amiss, said he’d catch Jack later, and took off.

Jack looked resigned and leaned against the lockers, wagging his fingers toward himself. “Okay. Come on. Give me your best shot.”

Give me your best shot?
Like I was his punishment, his jailer? I turned on my heel and strode away from him. He caught up with me. “Hey, come on. Don’t be that way.”

“No,
you
come on, Jack. Everything you said—”

“Everything
you
said,” he countered.

“But you agreed with me. You said so! You said… Just forget it.” I gritted my teeth and quickened my pace until I
pushed out the heavy front doors into a cold, gloomy afternoon.

Jack kept up with me as I hurried toward my car. “Would you just stop? Please?”

I didn’t, and I wouldn’t look at him. “Why did you lie to me? That’s all I want to know.”

“I didn’t…. I was… I want all those things we talked about, Kate. But sometimes you can’t have what you want, no matter how much you want it.”

“You should have just told me the truth.” It was drizzling now; I pulled my jacket closer and pressed the remote to unlock my car doors.

“Kate.” He slipped between the door and me. As I tried to muscle past him, the skies opened up; cold rain sheeted down on us.

“Get out of my way.”

He didn’t budge. “Not until we talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You’ll tell me whatever I want to hear, I’ll believe you, and we’ll just keep going through this. You’re a Redford. You’ll do the right thing. Go to The Citadel. Marry the right girl. Lead the right life.”

“Kate—”

“And don’t tell me how noble it is,” I ranted, oblivious to the elements. “Because that’s just an excuse. It’s not going into service you’re afraid of, Jack. It’s not even going to war. It’s living your own life.”

The fight seemed to go out of him. He stepped aside
and let me get into my car. As I drove away, he was still standing there. And I couldn’t tell where the rain left off and my tears began.

I curled into a ball on my cushioned window seat under the eaves and rocked to the rhythm of the rain. I told my parents I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t go down for dinner. After a while, Portia tiptoed in with a tray of tea and cookies. My father brought me an afghan and kissed my forehead. Finally, my mother made her appearance. She asked if I’d had a fight with Jack. I said I didn’t want to talk about it. She told me that she loved me; she was there if I needed her. On her way out, she fluffed the pillows on my bed, centering her favorite:
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.
“Maybe writing would help you get in touch with your feelings,” she said.

She didn’t understand. I couldn’t possibly write. I was hollow, bruised, and at the same time, numb. Without Jack, all color was bleached from the world, all happiness. I fell asleep by the window to the staccato tattoo of raindrops on glass.

Tick, tick, tick.
It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

Swimming up from my dream, I thought how much time there was between the drops, and how heavy they sounded.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Not raindrops, my mind said. Sleet.