A Summer of Kings (7 page)

"Auntie Pie, it's me."

"Go away."

"Auntie Pie."

There was silence and then finally, with a sigh, "Come in."

I opened the door. Auntie Pie was sitting up in bed, with a tray on her lap, eating a piece of rum-nut cake and reading one of her Gothic romances.

She looked up at me and said, her voice cross, "What do you want? I'm right in the middle of the denouement."

"What did you tell Mother?" I came over and sat down on the edge of Auntie Pie's bed, sending her plate sliding to the far side of her tray.

"Hey there, you! Get up off my bed. You're making me spill."

I stood up. "Well? What did you say?"

Auntie Pie took a large bite of her cake and mumbled, "About what?"

"About King-Roy. About King-Roy, Auntie Pie. What did you tell Mother? Come on, you know what I mean."

Auntie Pie smiled and a piece of walnut showed, stuck between her front teeth.

"I told her about the gun, just like I said I would. What did you think? You think you could blackmail me into not telling her? Are you a blackmailer now?"

"Oh, Auntie Pie, you didn't. How could you?" I flopped back down on the bed, forgetting about the cake.

"Hey, watch it! Now look what you've done."

The cake and all its many crumbs had slid off the tray and onto Auntie Pie's bedspread. She held her hands up in the air and looked down at the mess with dismay.

"I'm sorry, Auntie Pie." I felt tears stinging my eyes, and I tried to blink them away while I helped her clean up the mess.

"I hate this day. I hate everything about it," I said, giving up and letting the tears fall. "I thought—I had hoped—well, it doesn't matter. King-Roy's gone and that's that."

"He's not gone. Did I say that he was gone?" Auntie Pie had gotten out of the bed and was helping me brush the crumbs off the bed and onto the floor.

I looked across the bed at her and said, "But you said—"

"I said I told your mother, but he's still here."

"But..." I looked toward the hallway.

"But nothing. As it turns out, our Mr. Johnson had already told your mother everything. He said he didn't want the gun in the house, and your mother took it and threw it in the trash. The end." Auntie Pie stood looking at me with her finger in her mouth, trying to dislodge more nuts from her teeth.

I reached across the bed and grabbed her and gave her a peck on the cheek. "I knew he was a good guy. Thanks, Auntie Pie."

"Would you let go of me and get out now?" she said, exasperated.

I let go and she fell forward, reaching her hands out to catch herself before she landed face-first on the bed. Her right palm landed in her plate of cake and smashed it flat. "Now look," she said. "Honestly, you're just like a white tornado. Get out before you bring the ceiling down on me."

I hurried out of the room and ran to the top of the staircase to listen for King-Roy. I wanted to see him one more time before I went to bed. I just had to see with my own eyes that he was still there.

I leaned over the banister and stretched my neck and listened for him. I heard voices. Monsieur Vichy and Dad were home. I heard King-Roy say, "Yes sir, same to you, good night, now."

I clapped silently and bounced on the balls of my feet and listened for King-Roy to climb the stairs.

There it was, the
tap-tap
of his footsteps. I heard him approaching, and I stood back at the top of the staircase to wait for him. Then, just before he rounded the corner, just before I saw him again, I looked down at myself and realized all I had on was a T-shirt and my underpants, which is all I ever wore when I went to bed. I squealed and ran down the hall.

I heard Auntie Pie call out, "Get to bed, Esther," as I passed her room, and Sophia called out, "You okay?" as I passed hers. I didn't answer either of them. I ran into my room and jumped back into my Bermuda shorts, then I ran back into the hallway and crashed right into King-Roy on his way down to his room. He held a can of paint in each hand, and these were what I hit up against when we crashed. Both cans knocked into my hips and I knew I'd get some ugly bruises from them but I didn't care. King-Roy was there. I could feel my heart pounding. After we both said, "Omph," from the crash, King-Roy clutched the paint cans to his own hips and said, "Well, hey, there you are. I missed you at dinner."

"You did?" I looked into King-Roy's face to see if he was being sincere. He looked sincere, there in the yellow glow of the night-light Mother always turned on before bed. His face, ocher from the night-light, held that quiet expression he had worn when I first met him.

He held up the paint cans. "Your momma gave me work to do. I'm to paint the laundry room. Imagine that, a whole room just for laundry." He shook his head.

I nodded. "You could park four limousines in that laundry room and still have room to skate around in it. It's that big," I said.

"Well, I'm not complaining, I need the work. I need to make me some money. Does she pay well?"

"If you do a good job she does, but Mother's a perfectionist, so don't take any shortcuts."

"Thanks for the tip. I'll do her a good job, all right. Well, good night, then."

He started to leave and I grabbed hold of his shirt. "Wait. Uh—this afternoon you were going to tell me about the day that changed your life. Remember?" I didn't want him to leave yet. I wanted something from him, but I didn't know what. I just wanted him to come into my room, sit down, have a talk. I wanted to get to know him, figure him out. Mother always said I made people uncomfortable, the way I looked at them, the way I sort of attacked them like I wanted to crawl inside them and get up in their heads. She said I unnerved people. Maybe she was right. I could see King-Roy pulling away.

"Tomorrow sometime," he said, withdrawing his arm from my grasp.

I let go, tried another tack. "So, how was dinner?"

King-Roy wrinkled up his nose. "You want the truth? Your momma's been up north too long. She cooked New York food. Tasted like cardboard with baking-soda sauce." He shook his head. "First time in my life I ever sat down to supper with white folks."

"Really?" I said.

King-Roy lifted his hand and, with the paint can hanging from his palm, scratched his nose. "Where am I gon' eat with whites in the South? I can't even look out the same window as them down there." King-Roy lifted his chin. "So where were you, anyway? Why weren't you at dinner?"

I shrugged. "Auntie Pie and I got into an argument, and I lost. Mother sent me to my room."

"Too bad. You must be hungry. I would have been happy to save you off some of my supper."

"I'm starving, but that doesn't matter, as long as you can stay here. You
can
stay, can't you? Mother didn't tell you to leave or anything—because of the gun?"

King-Roy shook his head. "No, it's all right."

I grinned from ear to ear. I know I did. "I'm so glad," I said.

King-Roy said, "Yeah, it's all right," but he didn't look so happy about it. He said, "Now you go on and get a good night's sleep. We all wore ourselves out today, sure 'nuff."

"Oh, I'm not tired. I never sleep much. My father says I have the Young curse. Everyone on his side of the family tends to burn the candle at both ends." I knew I was just talking, trying to keep him with me just a little longer.

King-Roy nodded. "Well, good night, now. Be seeing you in the morning."

I touched King-Roy's sleeve. "Good night, King-Roy. See you tomorrow."

I watched King-Roy walk down the hall, and I noticed he was walking funny, like he had a leg ache or something. He reached the end of our wing and was just about to turn left to go to his rooms when I heard a thud and saw something fall out of the leg of his pants. I couldn't tell what it was because his pant leg was still covering most of it, and even with the night-light, the hallway was too dim to see well.

King-Roy said, "Shoot," and looked back at me.

I ran forward. "I'll get it," I said, thinking he wanted me to pick up what he had dropped.

King-Roy panicked. "No!" he said, starting to bolt, then, I guess, remembering the object on the floor, he stopped and stooped down, still with the cans of paint in his hands. Before he could release the handles, before he could reach down and pick up what he had dropped, I was there, on the floor, and I grabbed it up for him. I had only wanted to help. I had only wanted to be his friend, but when I saw what I held in my hand, when I felt the weight of it, the coolness of it against my skin, I knew I had made a mistake.

"It's—it's your gun. The one Mother threw away in the trash. Auntie Pie said so." I looked at him. Our heads were almost touching, we were so close, stooped there in the hallway. I could smell his sweat. I could see fear in his eyes.

"I sure wish you hadn't seen that," King-Roy said. He pulled the gun out of my hand, moving slowly, being really careful, as though it was loaded. Then he stood up and tucked it back into the waistband of his pants.

"Can we just pretend you didn't see that?" he asked me, whispering.

"I—I don't know," I said, standing up with him. "I don't understand. How come you took the gun back?" I kept my voice low, and when I said
gun,
even I couldn't hear it, but I knew King-Roy understood.

"Because it doesn't belong to me. I'm gon' have to give it back someday."

"Whose is it, then?"

He studied my face and asked, "Can I trust you?"

I nodded, wondering what he was about to tell me. I felt scared. Standing with King-Roy in that narrow, dimly lit hall felt dangerous all of a sudden. The hallway didn't look familiar to me anymore; it didn't feel safe. In my heart everything felt dangerous.

King-Roy lowered his head so that it was closer to mine and said, "I met someone on the bus on the way up here. A man. We rode together for two days. For two days this man—Ax is his name; short for Accident—he told me things. He told me things I'd never heard before. Things I could hardly believe, but it made a lot of sense."

King-Roy stopped talking and picked the paint cans back up as though that was it, that was all he had to say, so I asked him, "What did he tell you? Was it about the gun? Why did he give it to you?" Again, I only mouthed the word
gun.

"For protection. That's all, just for protection."

"But from what?" I asked, wondering what kind of protection someone needed in our little town.

King-Roy lowered his head again and said, "From the white devil."

I pulled my head back. "What's that?"

King-Roy looked to his left and right and leaned in toward me. "I shouldn't be telling you this."

"Sure you should," I whispered, too curious to let him stop now.

I could see a look of doubt in King-Roy's face, so I took hold of his wrist and tugged on him to follow me. I led him back to my bedroom and we went inside and I closed the door behind us.

King-Roy turned around at the sound of the door clicking shut. His eyes were wide and his head was shaking as though he was saying no.

"This isn't good. I can't be in your room at night with the door closed," he said.

"Why not? It's okay. Nobody cares," I said, moving around him, then turning to face him.

King-Roy backed up toward the door. "People care aplenty." He spoke with his voice just above a whisper, so I did, too.

"Not here, they don't. Not in New York. Not at my house," I said, moving closer to King-Roy until I saw him backing away from me again, then I stopped and we just stood facing each other. King-Roy still had the paint cans in his hands, and I thought the handles had to be digging into his palms.

"At least you can put the paint cans down," I said.

King-Roy shook his head. "No, I'll hold on to them. I can't be accused of doing anything with my hands full of paint, can I?"

I moved over to my bedside table and turned off my radio. "So what's the white devil?" I asked, hoping to get him away from his fear of getting caught in my room and back to what we were talking about.

King-Roy looked miserable. His eyes were all over the place, glancing at the door, at the windows, at my closet door, at me. Then he said, "You're not the right person I should be talking to about that."

"Why not?" I asked, sitting down at my study table and wishing King-Roy would join me. I didn't understand anything. King-Roy's face wore two lines between his brows and they deepened when he said, "Because you're white. Don't you see? You're a white girl, a white devil."

"Me? A white devil?" I asked. "But you don't need protection against
me.
At least not gun protection, do you?"

King-Roy said, "I don't rightly know who I need protection from. It's different up here in New York. The rules for black and white are different up here, but Ax says just because I can sit down with y'all at the same dinner table and sleep under the same roof with y'all, that I'm not to let that fool me, and I know he's right. Shoot, maybe he's right about a lot of things." King-Roy paused a moment, pushed out his jaw, and squinted across the room at the windows. Then he said, "I was raised in a Christian home, a good Christian home, but now, that's not right for me anymore. Things have changed." He glanced at me for a second, then back to the windows. "My whole life has changed."

I tilted my head. "What do you mean, King-Roy?"

King-Roy spoke as if he hadn't heard. "It started changing before I left Birmingham, and it's still changing. It seems every day I'm waking up into a brand-new life. It's getting so I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of what I might wake up to."

"Is that why you need the gun, because you're afraid to go to sleep?"

He nodded, still squinting at the windows as though he could see his friend Ax standing there, and he said, "Yeah, I think old Ax has got something there."

"Got what? Where? What do you mean?" I asked, staring up at his face.

King-Roy didn't shift his gaze. He stared steadily at the windows and said, "Ax said the white devil wants to keep us ignorant and make us feel bad about ourselves, like we're dirty and no good, so he makes up all these stories to keep us ashamed of ourselves. He said the white devil doesn't want us to know that Negroes were the first people on Earth. He doesn't want us to know that we were the original masters of this planet."