A Stranger in the Kingdom (22 page)

Nat flopped back down on the sand and said sleepily, “Wake me up if it starts to rain, Kinneson. I'm tired.”

“You're always tired,” I said.

But he was asleep already.

After a while I got up to check the bait trap. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a fleeting glimpse of movement on the bank above us. Standing not fifteen feet away was Frenchy LaMott, hefting a goodsized rock in a calculating way I did not like one bit.

 

“Nat, wake up.”

“I am awake.”

“Frenchy's here. He's got rocks.”

Nat rolled over and looked up at Frenchy, who was tossing the stone up in the air a few inches and catching it.

“What you boys trespassing out here for?” Frenchy said.

“We're on our way,” Nat said mildly.

I quickly pulled in the minnow trap and emptied the fresh batch of crawdads into the sack.

“Say, monkeypaw, you catching crawdads?” Frenchy said in a surprised voice. “Well, now, you just pack up and clear on out of here. That way.”

He pointed across the trestle. “Because you ain't crossing them frigging tracks and coming up on my premises again.”

I wondered when Frenchy had acquired the right of way to the Boston and Montreal railroad, but thought better of inquiring.

Nathan stood up. “Come on, Kinneson.”

He picked up the sack of crawfish and headed at a slant up the bank, away from Frenchy and out onto the trestle.

“Step on it, monkeypaw,” Frenchy said, and threw a handful of ballast from the railbed at Nat's heels. The stones bounced off the ties and rails and rained down through the spaces between the ties into the river far below. It made me dizzy to see them hit the water.

“Monkeypaw Andrews. Crawdad Andrews,” Frenchy hollered. “Looks like a crawdad, acts like a crawdad. Backs away every time. NOW, BOYS!”

That is when Frenchy's two half-brothers, Emile and Jeanie, scrambled up over the far end of the trestle and stationed themselves directly in our path. We were trapped!

“Where you going now, crawdad?” Frenchy started out onto the trestle behind us.

“Only one place to go,” Frenchy said. “Down.”

Frenchy LaMott reached into the pocket of his filthy denim jacket. He brought out another handful of ballast and flung it at us. As I turned to shield my face with my arms, a rock thrown by Jeanie or Emile grazed my head. It stung fiercely, transforming my fear into rage.

I lowered my head and charged Emile and Jeanie, who looked at me for a moment, then turned tail and broke for safety. They jumped down onto the bank and disappeared into the alders, where they thrashed around like two moose calves.

I had assumed Nat was right behind me. But when I turned around, he was standing in the middle of the trestle, facing Frenchy LaMott. He had set down the crawdad sack. His hands were at his side and there was an indefinable looseness about the way they hung there and the way he was standing, waiting for Frenchy, who looked suddenly uncertain.

“Go on back, Frenchy,” Nat said. “Don't come any closer to me.”

“You going in the river, crawdad,” Frenchy said. “Down in the slime with you friends.”

But he didn't sound so sure of himself anymore.

Nat shook his head “Go back.”

“Frenchy!” someone screamed. “You get down off there and leave that preacher boy alone.”

It was Ida LaMott. She was coming down the road from the slaughterhouse, wearing a blood-smeared rubber apron. She screamed something at her son in French just as he aimed a tremendous roundhouse at my friend's head. Nat stepped back, moved his head fast to one side, reached out, and slapped Frenchy with his open hand. Frenchy swung again, missing by a good foot. Again Nat slapped him. Frenchy came at him, roaring. Nat held him at arm's length and slapped him once, twice, three times.

It was no fight at all. Frenchy hadn't laid a hand on him.

Ida LaMott was screaming in French. Now Hook LaMott was coming down the road. “What da hell going on here?” he bellowed.

On the trestle Frenchy lashed out at Nat with his boot. Nat stepped back and at the same time swatted Frenchy to hold him off. Frenchy gave a great enraged shout and charged. Nat hit him again with his open hand and Frenchy tripped and fell off the trestle thirty feet into the river below.

“No!” Ida LaMott screamed as her son fell. “No, no, no!”

Frenchy hit the water feet first with a tremendous splash and sank like a stone. I ran put beside Nathan and we looked down into the murky pool, waiting for Frenchy to surface. I had little doubt that he would be up at any moment. More than once I'd seen him jump off the trestle just in front of the Montreal Highball, its airbrakes and whistle shrieking.

But this time Frenchy LaMott did not reappear.

“Oh, brother,” Nat said, and dived into the pool I don't know how long he was under, but it seemed like a very long time. When he came up he was well below the trestle, swimming slowly and towing Frenchy with his chin just above the water. I ran down the bank and helped Nat drag Frenchy out, and we turned him face-down on the sand. By the time Ida and Hook arrived, Frenchy was breathing again, up on his hands and knees and gasping. Ida screamed at him in French and shrieked in French at Hook. Hook was laughing.

“Get da hell up on you feet,” Hook said, and assisted Frenchy with a boot in the behind.

Hook turned to Nat. “Let him drownd next time, you,” he said. “He ain't wort hauling out.”

Somewhere behind us, Emile and Jeanie were still thrashing in the alders.

“Haw,” Hook LaMott said. “Look for dem dummies tomorrow, next day, up Memph'magog.”

Sending Frenchy reeling in the direction of the trestle with another well-aimed kick, Hook went back to work.

“Thank you, boy, thank you,” Ida LaMott kept telling Nat. “You save my Frenchy life.”

Nat shrugged. He got the sack of crawdad and he and I headed back to town.

“You won't have any more trouble with him, Nat,” I said excitedly. “Or from anybody else around here. This'll be all over town within an hour. You're a hero.”

But I was amazed to see that Nathan Andrews was nearly crying.

I wanted to console him, but what could I say? I was beginning to see that being a Negro was different and harder than being white, whether you lived in Canada or Europe or Kingdom County, Vermont.

 

That night was Production Night at the Monitor. Around nine o'clock, as I was coming down the stretch with the second run, Reverend Andrews came into the shop with a notepad. He gave me his two-finger salute, then conferred briefly with my father. I was afraid Nat's father might be mad at me for taking Nat out to the trestle that morning. But after a minute the minister went downstairs to the basement, where my father stored the back issues of the papers. Shortly afterwards I finished the run.

At about the same time, Cousin Elijah shut off his linotype and stalked across the room and down into the basement. “That preacher,” he said when he reappeared, “is ransacking through back issues. What's he after, I'd like to know, prying and spying and navigating around down there?”

“He isn't spying on anyone, Elijah,” my father said. “He's researching local history for the church sesquicentennial. What's more, he has my express permission to come in here and do that anytime he wants.”

“Does he have your express permission to set fire to the building?”

“For God's sake, Elijah, what do you mean?”

“Don't blaspheme, cousin. I just apprehended him smoking a cigarette down there. I made him extinguish it. Very likely that's how the Great Fire of '36 started. Some tramp smoking a cigarette and navigating around where he shouldn't have been.”

“His vigilance has prevented another local Armageddon,” my father told the framed photograph of H. L. Mencken on the wall above the addressing machine.

From the cellar I heard a chortle. A minute later Reverend Andrews emerged and wandered over to the shelf behind my father's desk, where Dad kept Pliny Templeton's
Ecclesiastical History.

“This looks most fascinating,” he said. “Useful for my research, as well. Would you mind if I borrowed it?”

“Not at all,” Dad said. “But guard it with your life. That's the only copy of the book in existence.”

“Hold on here a—” Elijah started to say, but Reverend Andrews had already given us another quick salute, thanked my father, and gone out the door.

Now Elijah was really angry.

“I can't believe you let him just walk off with that, Cousin. As you very well know, it's irreplaceable. I wouldn't trust that fella with it for a minute.”

“I trust him with it,” Dad said. “And since it belongs to me and is mine to lend if I choose to, that's the beginning and the end of it.”

“I'll tell you this straight out, Cousin Charles, and you'll do well to listen. Your friend the new minister is not what he appears to be. He may hoodwink you and the trustees, and he may hoodwink the congregation. But he's never bamboozled me for a minute. He is not what he appears to be. Why did he want to leave a good job in the service? Why did he want to leave Canada? What happened to that wife of his?”

“She died,” my father said. “What happened to yours?”

This so enraged our peevish cousin, who had even less use for women than for boys, that just before I headed out the door, he stamped off into the night.

Outside, the evening had cooled off noticeably. As I headed diagonally across the common, it started to rain. Hurrying along under the big elms, I wondered what Elijah meant by saying that Reverend Andrews wasn't what he seemed to be. As nearly as I could tell, he was exactly what he seemed to be: a minister, and a good one, who wanted to bring up his son in the country. To me, the real mystery was Elijah's suspicious nature. How my father had ever put up with him for all these years was beyond me.

As I crossed the tracks at the north end of the common, a long dark vehicle slid out of the driveway between the commission sales barn and the undertaking parlor and pulled up beside me. The driver rolled down his window. “That you, Jimbo?”

Instantly my heart began to beat faster. It was Sheriff Mason White in his patrol hearse.

“You on your way home, are you? Hop in. Seeing it's raining, I'll run you out to the gool.”

I was desperate to think up some excuse not to get into that frightful vehicle. “That's all right, Sheriff. I—I like to walk in the rain.”

“Yes, sir,” he said with a knowing laugh. Then, in an altogether different tone, “Get in. I've been waiting for you.”

Scared nearly out of my wits, I got into the front seat of the hearse, keeping my eyes unswervingly ahead. I had no reason to think that there was a corpse in the back at that particular moment, but I wasn't taking any chances.

“Jimbo,” the Sheriff said in a stern voice as we eased away from the curb, “I got a bad report on you this P. of M. Word is, you and young Andrews was up to some serious mischief out to the high trestle.”

“We were not,” I said, nearly crying. “We went for crawdads and Frenchy LaMott came along and shagged us out on the trestle with rocks. He took a swing at Nathan and Nathan slapped him. Then Frenchy fell off the trestle into the river, and if Nathan hadn't dived in and pulled him out, Frenchy would have drowned.”

“That ain't quite the way I heard it, Jimbo. According to my reports, the Andrews boy suckered Frenchy out on the trestle and knocked him off a-purpose.”

“That's not true!” I shouted. Now that my dander was up, I didn't care who or what Mason White had in the back of that hearse. Dracula himself could have been back there, for all I cared.

“Talk to Ida LaMott if you don't believe me,” I said.

“Calling me a liar, are you, Jimbo?” Mason said as we headed slowly east out of the village. “I reckon we'll just have to see what Mother and Dad Kinneson have to say about a boy that talks back to an elected officer of the law and calls him a liar.”

“That's right, we will.”

“Mother and Dad K know you were out there by that trestle today, Jimbo?”

When I didn't reply, Mason chuckled. “Mom and Dad K are going to be pret-ty upset, seeing you brought home in the patrol hearse and all.”

To my relief, instead of turning left over the red iron bridge onto the gool, Mason pulled into the turnoff just across from Charlie's trailer, where the woods had been logged off the previous summer. The trailer was dark. No doubt Charlie was off with his team.

Leaving the motor running, Mason said, “Well, Jimbo, I and you can come to an understanding between us yet. Tell you what. According to my reports, you weren't really the one to blame out there this afternoon anyway. Any more than you were to blame for that rackus at Bumper's barn last evening. So I'd be more than satisfied if you were to retract that allegation you made back there about me not telling the truth.”

“I apologize for calling you a liar,” I mumbled. “But Nathan and I—”

“That's good, that's real good,” Mason said. “Now just one more thing, Jimbo. You really ought to be a little choosier about the company you keep, now that you're getting older.”

When I started to object, he held up his hand. “I don't mean I have anything against the colored fella and his boy. Some of the finest people I've ever known were colored folks. You're just better off sticking closer to your own kind, the folks you grew up with, if you know what I mean.”

I did know what he meant and it made me sick to my stomach. But I also knew that Mason had no way to keep me from associating with Nathan Andrews or Nathan's father or anyone else I wanted to associate with.

“Okay, skeedaddle,” the sheriff said, rewing his engine. “Oh, one more thing. Say hello to Mom and Dad K for me, will you, and tell that big brother of yours hello, too, if you can ever find him.”