Leaving: A Novel (27 page)

Easton stared at the metal plating under the car—he didn’t want to remember her face. He reached up and touched the cool bottom of the car and then pushed up against it as hard as he could, his chest and neck bursting. Then he let go and breathed out silently.

“I knew you could get into college,” she said. “Just two years and you can transfer to Cal.”

“What makes you think I want to do that?”

She shifted her weight.

“I don’t know. I just thought that’s what people did, I guess.” She paced at the side of the car. “How’s your drawing?”

“Listen, Sandra, what’d you come here for?” She walked away from the car and sat on the bench. Now he could see her legs and dress, all the way up to her stomach. He imagined throwing a wrench at her.

“Did you see that picture of Sheriff Clark beating Annie Cooper in Selma?” she asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Did you hear what she did? As she was being wrestled to the ground, she yelled out, ‘Don’t you hit me, you filthy scum.’” Sandra clapped and laughed out loud.

“So what’s your point?”

“I’m going down to Alabama,” Sandra said.

He froze for a second, but then crossed his legs at the ankles, casually, where she could see. He was unhappy to find himself wishing she wouldn’t go. Even though almost a year had gone by without any contact, somehow her proximity gave him hope that they would get back together.

“They’re arresting hundreds of people, schoolkids too. I thought you might want to come be a part of the revolution down there.”

“You sound like Charles.” But even as he ridiculed her, he imagined sitting beside her in the blue front seat of her Olds, the windows rolled down and the desert around them. He could look at her face as she was driving, wind in her hair, freckles on her ear.

“I’ve got school,” he said.

“Oh, come on. I’m taking the semester off.” She got off the bench and knelt at the edge of the car. He could see her now, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes smiling at him. He was frightened by how beautiful she was to him. She could see him now also, see that he didn’t have any tools, that he wasn’t working on anything. But she didn’t mention it.

“Why do you want me to go?” he asked. He looked straight up at the car.

“I want you to be a part of it. Everyone is down there.”

“The Reverend Dr. Chicken Wing?” Easton muttered.

“What?”

“That’s what Malcolm X calls him. Didn’t Charles tell you?”

“Malcolm X was down there too, for a day.”

He pulled himself out from under the car and stood up. She stayed kneeling and he looked down at her, though it felt as if he were the one begging.

“Why do you care if I go? Why do you care?”

She frowned and considered his question. “Because.” She shook her head as if she’d never considered it. “I don’t know. Because I thought you’d want to. I thought you’d want to do something.”

“I see.” He turned around and then back to her again, with no place to go. “Is that why you want me around, so I can introduce you to some of my people? So you can be some cool chick showing up with a Black guy in your car? ‘Well golly, Shawn, she must really love us niggers; she drove all the way from California with one.’” He brushed himself off. Steve stayed quiet, his eyes still lowered on the paper. Sandra walked outside and Easton followed her. She turned and faced him.

“Why are you getting so upset?”

They were out by the pumps now and the customers stared at them.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he said.

“I thought you would want to go. Really. I thought I was doing something nice.”

“Well, I don’t have any reason to go to the South,” he said. “I don’t need to get hosed down for the cause. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”

He walked over to her car, motioning her to follow.

“Tell me something,” he said to her through his teeth when she reached him. He grabbed her wrist and held it tightly. “Do you really have no idea why I’m so upset? Are you that stupid? Because I’ll tell you straight out if you need me to.”

“I think I know.” She adjusted the side mirror of her car with her free hand as if nothing were happening.

“Why? You tell me why,” he said.

“Because I wouldn’t sleep with you.”

“Oh, man!” He threw his hands in the air and turned all the way around, then faced her again. “I’m angry at you because you never told me why. You never explained it. You just up and left, no questions allowed. How would you like someone to do that to you? And now you want me to go on this big trip with you, drop everything I have and be with you again like nothing ever happened. I’ll tell you why I’m angry at you. I’m angry at you for coming here and not knowing.”

“I left you because I thought it was best for both of us.”

“Well, thank you so very much for making my decisions for me.” He leaned on the car with a contemptuous smirk on his face. “You know, that’s the whole problem with you folks. You think you know what’s best for us without ever asking what we want.”

“I guess I was right.” She brushed her fingertips across her forehead. She let the words hang.

“What were you so right about this time?”

“We could never have gotten past it. I’m not saying it’s your fault. It just would have always been ‘us folks’ and ‘you folks.’ Never just you and me. That’s why I left. That’s why I didn’t want to go any further with you.”

“So you left me ’cause I’m Black.”

“No. But that’s how you’re going to say it was.”

“Whatever. I know what I know. Ruby warned me.”

“Let’s just forget it, Easton.” She opened the driver’s door and got in.

“Yeah. Let’s forget it.” He walked away and heard her start up the car. She didn’t shift into gear at first, but waited, for what he didn’t know, but he hoped that she was waiting for him to come back, because he wasn’t going to. He walked into the building and then into the garage. It wasn’t until he was behind the garage window that he turned around and watched her leave the gas station. He stared at her car as it pulled into the street, and he stared at the street long after she had gone.

SANTA RITA JAIL

TODAY I READ
from
Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses:

Early in the Civil War, when the federal government still adhered to the notion that it was
not
a war over slavery, a debate was carried on among Negroes of the North over whether or not to offer their services. Many did attempt to enlist, but the sentiments of many others equalled that of one man who wrote:

I have observed with much indignation and shame, their willingness to take up arms in defence of this unholy, ill-begotten, would-be Republican government, that summons its skill, energy, and might, of money, men and false philosophy that a corrupt nation can bring to bear, to support, extend, and perpetuate that vilest of all vile systems, American slavery … (Wesley W. Tate)

Yet many Negroes had sought to enlist, and attempts were continued until Congress authorized the use of Negro troops in 1862. Even after rejections Negroes had formed companies or military clubs and drilled, keeping themselves in readiness for the day when the government would decide they were fit, and needed and wanted in the fight. By the end of the war 186,017 Negroes had fought with the Union Army—over 100,000 of them recruited in the South.

Negroes of the South took a stand on the war in other ways also. Some refused to work altogether; others demanded wages for their labor. Many guided Union soldiers and gave information to federal troops. Probably the best known Negro information-gatherer was Harriet Tubman who was a spy behind Confederate lines. In many cases slaves seized the property of their masters when Union troops arrived.

There are recorded cases of slave attack on white civilians in the South, but despite the greatly increased fears of the Southern whites and widespread rumors of uprisings, there was no general insurrection. This is not surprising in the view of the militarization of the South during the war which overlay the already established system of repression. In addition many observers agree that a general uprising was precluded by the accommodation of slaves to the slave system under the pressures of its elaborate techniques for preventing communication, and for breaking the will to resist by a combination of punishment and reward. But while there was no general insurrection during the war slaves did reveal their sentiments, for thousands fled to the Union lines.

Once Negroes were accepted in the Union Army other struggles began. The War Department order providing for Negro enlistment also provided that black regiments were to have only white officers. Despite many appeals and petitions by soldiers, resolutions of Negro organizations, and representations by Negro leaders, not more than 100 Negroes received officers’ commissions during the war. A second struggle of black soldiers was the fight for equal pay. Two Massachusetts regiments, the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth, refused to accept any pay at all until pay was equalized. When the Massachusetts legislature appropriated funds to make up the difference between their pay and that of white soldiers the Negro regiments still refused, holding out for a federal equal-pay order. As Congress debated the issue there were threats of strikes and mutinies. One sergeant, William Walker of the Third South Carolina Volunteers, led his company to the captain’s tent and ordered them to stack their arms and resign from the army. He was court-martialed and shot for mutiny. The law providing for equal pay was passed six months after its introduction, but even then it had its faults. For those soldiers who had been free at the outbreak of the war, pay was made retroactive to the time of enlistment, for those who gained freedom through service in the war, pay was retroactive only to January 1, 1864. Thus, the Congress made a distinction between those who were free before the war and those who became free due to enlistment, providing full pay only for the former.…

From the beginning Lincoln had maintained that the aim of the war was to unite the country, and throughout he based his conservative approach on his desire to keep the border states loyal. He cited this when he revoked emancipation orders issued by two of his generals. Then, even when the time came for the admission that slavery was “at the root of the rebellion” the Emancipation Proclamation, so joyously hailed, was itself a reaffirmation of his caution, for it freed only the slaves in the rebel states.

CHAPTER 15

January
1994   •   RUBY 56, LOVE 14, LI’L PIT 10

BY TEN-FORTY AT
night, Li’l Pit was asleep upstairs after gorging himself on nachos and ice cream from the salad and dessert bar at Sizzler. Downstairs, Love sat on the corner of Ruby’s bed while she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her shoes off and her feet swollen in her stockings.

Love hadn’t been in her room more than twice before, and it seemed like an eerie place, out of time. The bed was thick and so high off the ground that his feet didn’t touch. There was a dim yellow light cast by the small lamp at her bedside and a large oak-framed mirror above her dresser. A thick smell of baby powder hung in the air, and the walls were covered in pastel blue wallpaper.

“We could say that he’s got to get out if he doesn’t quit the crew?” Love turned to his grandmother, but she shook her head.

“He’ll jus leave. Then you lost him forever. I been there before with your mama.” Ruby rubbed one foot with the other.

“Could lock him in his room.”

“And what you think he gonna do when he get out? ’Cause you know one day he gonna get out. Then we that boy’s worse enemies, and he goin go an join up with your hoodlums.”

Love stood and paced at the foot of her bed. “We got to do something. There’s got to be something to do.” He stopped and turned to her excitedly. “We could take him to Juvi. We could take him there and have them keep him.”

“You know he’s got to have done something first.”

“That’s right. He just has to do something.” Love started pacing again, his eyes flashing in excitement. “He got to kill somebody, and then they’ll take him to the home and he won’t get all messed up here.”

“Use your head. You are the dumbest boy I ever heard. You gonna get him to kill someone so he don’t get mixed up in crime. What kinda thinking is that?”

“My bad.” Love laughed at himself.

“Go in the kitchen and get me a tub of hot water and then I’ll tell you what we gonna do. And pour some of them salts in there.”

Love went into the kitchen, ran hot water into a metal tub, and brought it back for her. When he returned, she was in her nightgown, sitting at the edge of her bed.

Love watched her touch the water with her toes, pull them out, dip them down a little farther, and pull them out again, all the time breathing through her pursed lips like a woman giving birth. When she finally had her feet resting solidly at the bottom of the tub, she turned to Love and smiled.

“My husband, your mama’s papa, your real granpapa, name was Ronal. That’s what she named you. Your real name is Ronal LeRoy after your granpapa.”

“I know my own name.”

“But you didn’t know where it came from, now did you? Now hush up and listen. I got something to tell you. Your granpapa was gonna go to college. He wanted to go to college jus like you want for Paul, but he didn’t always want to go. He wanted to go ’cause he was scared into it. He tole me this story, that before he was born, his papa was a bootleg. That’s when they had no liquor allowed by law, and he made his money running corn whiskey. Now, he work for a Catholic man and they sell their whiskey all the way over to Walterboro. And you could make a lot of money doing that. And so he tried on his own to sell, and got into competition with the Catholic man and they had their problems. But Ronal’s papa gave all his moonshine to the police for free, so they leave him alone and he saved up a whole lot a money. Then the law changed and it was legal to sell liquor and there wasn’t no more business. Now six years later his wife had Ronal, ’bout the same time I was born. By then, Ronal’s papa worked for a coal mine cause he was too old for the war. And he took Ronal out to the mine when he was big enough and showed him how he went down into that hole, way down, and come up all dirty. Now, that hole was dark, and down in there wasn’t hardly any space to breathe and sometime it creaked and cracked and it already scared Ronal just looking down into it. On top a that, his papa got up at five every morning and come home every day all tired and aching and had no money, sayin how this was jus like slavery times. This scared Ronal even more, ’cause his older brother was going to work for the mine when he turn fourteen, and he saw what was coming for him. Then one day his papa didn’t come home. There was an accident at the mine an his papa was killed. And that’s when his mama tole him about all the money saved up from the bootleg days that Ronal was supposed to use to go to college, and if he never been thinking about it before, he never stop thinking about it after that. See, he was scared into it. And that’s what we got to do with Paul.”