Leaving: A Novel (32 page)

“Ain’t we goin back to L.A.?” Li’l Pit asked again. “You afraid that cop still there waitin for us? We don’t have to go back in through the station.”

“We can’t get another ticket back to L.A. What money are we going to use? We only have this ticket to Carolina.”

“We could sell it back.”

“You can’t sell nothing back once you got it. You got to just keep on going.”

“Shouldn’t we call Curse and tell him what’s up?” Li’l Pit asked.

“No. Definitely no.”

“We have to. This is my job, and I’m saying we should go back. I’m getting off.”

“You can’t.”

“Watch.”

Love grabbed him and Li’l Pit screamed: “Let go of me!” The passengers turned and stared.

“Listen. Wait,” Love said.

“Naw. It’s my job.”

“But you don’t know something.”

“I know we sposed to be in L.A.”

“No. Something else that you’ve got to know before callin Curse.”

“What already?”

“You’ve got to sit down before I tell you. I’m not going to yell this all over the bus.”

“Fine.” Li’l Pit sat in the seat.

“Okay.” Love’s face stretched into a smile.

“Stop playin.”

“Okay, okay. This is real important. I’m just smiling because it’s so important it’s making me nervous.”

“Hurry up. The man’s gonna come back.”

“Okay. You can’t call Curse because Curse doesn’t know we’re down here.” Love’s smile returned.

“Yeah he do.” Li’l Pit moved to the edge of his seat, as if he were about to get up and go.

“This is real, what I’m saying to you. You got to know sometime. There was no job. I made all of that up.”

“Curse told us to go on the job.”

“Curse thought I was talkin about some other job, some job for Freight.”

“What other job?”

“I don’t know. Some other job he had in mind when he paged you.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean, we really are going to South Carolina.”

“For Freight?”

“No. We’re going to South Carolina to get you all out of that mess.”

“When we going back?”

“Listen, dog, you’re not going back. From now on we only going forward. You’ve seen the last of Oaktown and all that G thing.”

“What you mean we goin to South Carolina?”

“We got family there.”

“What about Nanna?”

“She’s the one who wanted us to go. Haven’t you been listening to nothing I said in the station? She’s the one who gave us all the money.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Oh man.” Love put his hand over his forehead.

“We sposed to be pickin up somethin for Curse, that’s what you said. We got to call and tell him. They gonna kill us.”

“They don’t care.”

“They will when they find out you lyin.”

“They already probably found out, dog. But now we gonna be long gone.”

“But what about when we go back?”

“I told you, dog, we ain’t goin back.”

Li’l Pit shook his head like he was hoping all this confusion would shake itself into place.

“But what about Mama?”

“Forget her.”

“You can’t just take me, that’s stealin,” Li’l Pit yelled. “That’s kidnappin.” People in the bus shushed him but he didn’t care. “Naw. Naw. We got to get off.” He ran down the aisle and off the bus.

“Fine. Go on.” Love closed his eyes and gave all his weight over to the cool glass of the window. He put his headphones on to show how completely disinterested he was, but after a few seconds he opened his eyes and watched his brother out the window.

Li’l Pit walked toward the station with the determination of someone who knew he was being watched and had a point to prove. He walked up to the door just as the driver was coming out. He said something to the driver, and the man pointed inside the adobe building.

The driver let the door to the terminal shut behind Li’l Pit and labored back toward the bus under the yellow light of the parking lot. Halfway across the dirt expanse, he threw his cigarette on the ground. He hoisted his pants and cracked his neck. After taking a look up to the stars, he climbed the steps of the bus and sat down, adjusted himself in his seat, opened his side window, and pushed a button that shut the door with a loud hydraulic swish. Love stood up and climbed into the aisle.

“Wait,” he yelled. The bus moved forward and swung around in a U-turn toward the parking-lot entrance.

“Wait,” Love yelled again when he got to the driver.

“Calm down, son.”

“My brother’s still in there.”

“I know he’s in there. Have a seat.” The bus slowed down. “I’m just pulling up to the door.” Love stood there, half crouched, looking through the front windshield at the terminal. The door swung open, and Li’l Pit ran out of the building waving his arms.

“Wait,” he yelled. “Wait.”

Love quickly walked back to his seat and pretended to be asleep. The bus driver pulled up to the curb and opened the door again. Li’l Pit ran up the stairs. Out of breath, he bent over and put his hands on his knees.

“I thought you were leaving me,” Li’l Pit spat out.

“I ain’t leaving you out in the middle of nowhere, little man. Don’t worry.”

“I thought you were,” he said again.

“No one’s going to leave you.”

“How am I sposed to know that?” He shook his head. “I was just in the bathroom.”

“I know where you were. Wasn’t I the one who told you where to go?” He started the bus moving again. “Think I forgot about you?”

Li’l Pit shook his head.

“You better take a seat now.”

Li’l Pit walked back to the middle of the bus where Love was sitting, his head against the window, eyes closed, and headphones over his ears. Li’l Pit kept walking and sat in the empty row of seats behind his brother, watching him through the crack.

As the bus drove onto the freeway ramp, Love opened his eyes, and when he saw no one next to him, he jumped up and looked around the bus. Li’l Pit laughed from behind him.

“You’re hilarious,” Love said, and sank back down into his seat.

They remained in their separate rows. For half an hour, as the bus traveled across the desert at night, neither of them spoke or looked to see if the other was asleep. There were no lights on in the bus, nor were there any lights outside. The darkness was complete and impenetrable, except for the few dots of light in the sky. Time went by slowly, and they never seemed to gain any ground against the desert.

“I’m hungry,” Li’l Pit finally said.

“I know.”

“When we gonna stop again?”

“Probably not for a long time.”

“But I’m hungry,” Li’l Pit whined.

“What you want me to do? Ain’t you never been hungry before?”

Li’l Pit didn’t say any more. He knew the hunger would pass. First it would get worse, turn into pain, like a piece of glass cutting him from inside, and then just as he would think it unbearable, it would vanish, as if his stomach had been lying to him all that time. But until then, until it stopped poking at him, he knew he couldn’t get to sleep. He took a deep breath and let out a quiet chant as he did when he was banging his head to sleep: “Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh.” He stopped to inhale, and after every deep breath, he let out the chant again, each time a little louder.

“Shut up, dog,” Love whispered between the seats.

“Fuck you.” Li’l Pit punched at Love’s face, and when Love pulled back, Li’l Pit rose up and reached over the top of the seat, attacking Love, hitting and grabbing at his head.

“We sposed to be on a run,” he yelled. “We sposed to be going back.” Love batted his hands away. When Li’l Pit couldn’t reach anymore, he kicked and punched the seat from behind.

“Settle down,” the bus driver called to them. “I’m not going to have any of that on my bus.”

“Stop it, dog. Stop it.” Love stood up, went around to Li’l Pit’s row, and grabbed at his arms.

“Naw! Fuck you!” Li’l Pit punched at him through his tears, but Love caught him by the wrists. “What you doin? Let go of me, faggot! Let go of me!”

“Quiet down back there,” the bus driver said over the speaker.

Love pulled his little brother toward him and hugged him from behind, restraining him like they’d done at Los Aspirantes. He sat in the aisle seat with his brother wrapped in his arms like a straitjacket. Li’l Pit slammed his head backward against Love’s chest, aiming for his chin, but Love knew this trick and avoided the blow. He held on tightly, and finally his brother stopped struggling. His body still shook, and his tears dropped onto Love’s arms as he hyperventilated.

After a few minutes, Li’l Pit’s chest heaved in a long, deep breath, and the convulsing also stopped. He began to hum in a monotonous tone, accompanying the hum of the bus engine. Finally, after many miles, his throat tired, and there was only the steady hum of the bus as it traveled through the darkness. They sat like that in the calm, numbing silence, uninterrupted for minutes on end, and then broken only by the occasional flash of headlights and rush of a car speeding in the other direction on the two-lane highway.

“I want to go back,” Li’l Pit said quietly.

“We can’t go back. Nanna don’t want us there. It’s just us now.” Love relaxed his grip on Li’l Pit’s wrists but knew better than to let him go altogether.

“Why you doin this? Why didn’t you just let me be with Mama?”

“’Cause you my heart, bro. I want to see someone I love do good.” He let Li’l Pit pull his hand away to wipe his nose. “’Sides,” Love continued, “I don’t have anyone else I can trust to do your job. I need someone to watch my back. That’s your new job. You watch my back. You got a new job now, okay?”

A Jeep passed them and they looked over. When the tailights faded away, they saw their own dim reflections in the window, like two ghosts looking back at them.

“Okay?” Love asked. He squeezed his brother once to get a response. Li’l Pit nodded and put his wrists back into Love’s hands.

CHAPTER 2B

MARCH 1965   •   LOVE EASTON 19

EASTON FIXED THE
water pump properly in Jackson, and they drove to Meridian by nightfall. They stayed at a boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Walker. She had lost her domestic job for registering to vote, so she had made her home into a motel by nailing a
VACANCY
sign onto her front porch. During Freedom Summer, the year before, the COFO workers from the movement felt obliged to keep her house full until the fall. But she rarely had any paying guests anymore, so she was very pleased to see Charles and Easton. She was an old woman with a limp, an injury she’d gotten from fighting with her past husband when he was drunk. But even with her limp, she was quick to set up a cot in the living room with a bucket on the floor for spitting, though she was the only one who chewed tobacco.

In the evening after supper, Easton drew a picture of her and gave it to her before they went to bed. For the gift, she said she’d cook them breakfast for free in the morning, although Easton told Charles she would have done that anyway. Easton lay on the cot while Charles shared the couch with a longhaired cat. They all had their eyes open and stared at the ceiling in the dark.

“I can’t believe you grew up around here,” Charles said.

“I didn’t grow up anywhere near here. South Carolina’s five hundred miles away.”

“Yeah, but it’s the South, man. All these places is like going into a time machine.”

“No it’s not.”

“I mean it, man. I feel like standing up and screaming at these folks, ‘What you crazy people doing down here?’ Don’t you know what I mean?”

“South Carolina wasn’t like this.”

“It had to be something like this.”

“I don’t know. It always seemed different. At least in the South you know who likes you and who doesn’t.” Easton turned on his side and closed his eyes. He lay in silence for a moment, then a dog barked twice and a bottle broke somewhere outside, which reminded him of his father, Papa Samuel, but he pushed that thought out of his head with a picture of Sandra, sitting the way he had sketched her that day on his bed, the top of her dress pulled down over her shoulders.

“I got to go,” Charles said. “Where’d you say the bathroom was at?”

“Bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

“Out back.”

“You mean outside?”

“Just watch out for them spiders. And them cottonmouth snakes that live in the bottom of the pit.”

“That’s not funny.” Charles pulled on his socks.

“You don’t have to worry about none of that. The smell will kill you ’fore you sit down.”

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into coming down here.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come before me.”

“That was for the movement, but you let Sandra drag you down.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Damn right I don’t. And I don’t think you do, neither.”

“Maybe not. But when the feeling’s this strong, it’s like you know it’s got to work out right. It feels like everything is riding on it.”

“I don’t know how you get so excited about a White girl.” Charles slipped on his shoes.

“So,” Easton said, “you like girls with a big booty and nasty hair?”

“What’s nasty about their hair?”

“I’m talking about objective beauty,” Easton said. “I’m talking about hair that isn’t all in knots, and smooth skin that isn’t chapped all the time, and little firm asses and blue eyes. You’re gonna tell me that sparklin blue eyes that look like a swimmin pool aren’t prettier than brown holes you can’t even see nothin in but your own reflection?”

“Like yours, you mean.”

“Yeah, like mine. Sure. I’m not beyond self-awareness.”

“You got about as much self-awareness as a floor mat. Haven’t you ever been with a Black girl?”

“No, man, I couldn’t.”

“What you mean you couldn’t?”

“I don’t know. There’s something about just the thought of it, makes me feel kind of wrong, you know, kind of unnatural.”

“Man, you are one sorry-ass nigger.”

Easton threw his shoe at him and apparently hit something vulnerable.

“Aw man, that’s cruel. I’ve got to go.” Charles stood up. “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, send out the National Guard.”

“Don’t hold your breath before you go in,” Easton called out. “You’ll only end up having to take a deeper one right in the middle of it all.” Charles shuffled off through the kitchen and out the back door.