One Mississippi (25 page)

“Playing you like a fiddle,” said Dad. “See, Peg, kids always think they’re the ones that invented getting away with stuff. We were doing it long before you even existed.”

Mom smiled. “I knew if I told a flat-out lie, you wouldn’t be able to resist correcting me. And that would distract the man from what Daddy did. And sure enough! Thank goodness you’re so predictable.”

I was flabbergasted. I had bought their act completely, even played my assigned part in it. They had totally faked me out. It was like finding out your parents are secretly Bonnie and Clyde, robbing banks in their spare time. Dad fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it.

“What are you doing?” cried Mom. “You don’t smoke.”

“Shows how much you know. You want one?”

“What are those, Camels? Yeah, give me one.” She lit it with her own Zippo and blew smoke out the window.

“Can I have one?” I ventured.

“No!” they said in unison.

I coughed and rolled down my window.

Mom said, “Since when do you smoke?”

“Only out of town,” said Dad.

“Yeah, I don’t even want to think about what-all you do out of town. And you always nagging me to quit. You look so stupid with that thing in your mouth. You don’t even know how to smoke it!” She snatched the cigarette from his lips and tossed it out the window.

He grinned, and deftly grabbed her cigarette. “Ha!” He took one drag, blew the smoke in her face, and flung that one out the window too.

Okay, maybe this was love, some weird kind of “love” known only to them.

Dad found us two rooms at the Reid Motel, on Highway 80 on the way into Minor, just north of the Dairy Dog. The outside of the motel was homely and the rooms were even worse: hot, smelly, depressing. Dad said he had negotiated a dirt-cheap rate from the owner, Mr. Rashmi Patel. I said yeah, you get what you pay for. Dad said shut up, it was a fantastic deal. “You never had a pretty Injun lady coming to make up your bed for you at home, did you? You been whining about living too far out in the country. Now is your chance to enjoy city life!”

Mom set to scrubbing the bathtubs and putting out roach traps while Dad and I went to retrieve the boxes from the field on the hilltop above our former house. Down in the valley, we could see people still lining up at the yellow rope. It was strange how fascinated they were by something that wasn’t there.

After supper at Dairy Dog, we drove to the hospital. Every one of those glowing windows represented a sick person in bed. I had hated hospitals ever since that day in the emergency room in Pigeon Creek. “Mom, do I have to go in?”

“Don’t you want to see your sister? And Jacko?”

“I already know what they look like.”

Dad turned. “Am I gonna have a problem with you?”

“No sir.” I opened my door and got out. All day I had done a good job of saying “sir” and keeping my mouth shut. (Mostly.) I had passed up plenty of opportunities to say something smart. All I wanted was to get through this evening, get over to Arnita’s house somehow, and kiss her. Take her down to our place by the river.

“Don’t tell your sister about the house.” Mom’s heels clicked on the sidewalk. “It’ll be too big a shock in her condition.”

“I already told her.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Largemouth Bass,” said Dad. “I told you, he can’t help opening his mouth.”

“Hey, y’all. Who does that look like to you? Over there.” I pointed to a concrete porch at the end of the building, where an old man slumped in his wheelchair, swatting at the bugs swarming around his head.

Mom followed the line of my finger. “Is that Jacko?”

“Looks like him,” I said.

“What on earth is he doing out here?”

“Good question,” said Dad.

We hurried across the grass. Jacko lay with his head on the armrest of the wheelchair. With his free hand he swatted at bugs.

“Jacko, what in the world?” Mom cried. “Who put you out here?”

“That nigger nurse.”

Mom was furious. How could anyone take a sick old man off his oxygen and dump him outside? “We’re going up there and find out,” she declared.

I held the door open while Dad maneuvered Jacko’s wheelchair into the elevator. Mom seethed all the way. “Unbelievable! What if we hadn’t come back to check on him? Would they have just left him out there all night?”

The elevator doors slid open on five. Mom marched to the reception desk, where the nurse with orange hair sat writing in a chart. She studied the chart for the longest possible time before letting her eyes roll up to admit the sight of us.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Mom said, “can you explain to me why I just found my Uncle Jacko off his oxygen, downstairs, and sitting outside?”

“Who?”

“This man.” Mom drummed the handles of Jacko’s wheelchair. “Mr. Jack Otis Bates, your patient. Who we just found, sitting outside the hospital, getting eat up by mosquitoes — and he tells me y’all put him out there! It’s a wonder he’s not dead!”

“He looks all right to me.” The nurse placed both hands wide on her desk and hoisted herself upright. “I’ll help you put him back in the bed.”

“No!” Mom yelped. “No ma’am. That’s not what I want! I want to speak to your supervisor!”

The nurse smiled. “Supervisor gone home. Mr. Jack, what you doin’ up out of yo bed? Don’t you know you need to stay in there in your bed and rest, and get you some oxygen?”

She was good. I was impressed by how jolly she seemed. She chuckled at us like we were silly white folks, making such a fuss over nothing.

“I can’t wait to hear what our lawyer is going to say about this,” Dad said.

“You got a lawyer?” she said. “How come, y’all been in trouble?”

“No!” said Dad.

“It’s a wonder, with that temper.” She commandeered Jacko’s chair, moving us briskly down the hall. “We done told Mr. Jack we don’t want him taking hisself outside, not when he ’posed to be in bed havin’ his oxygen! Ain’t that right, Mr. Jack?”

“Yassum.” Jacko’s eyes loomed wide — something like fear.

“Mr. Jack even done learned my name,” she said. “Hadn’t you, sir? Hadn’t you learned the proper way to speak my name?”

“Yassum.” He cast down his eyes.

“What is it? What is my name?” she said, at the door to his room. “Tell the folks what my name is.”

“Nurse Odum,” he said.

“That’s right, my name is Nurse Odum, and now if you need anything you know how to call me!” She chuckled deeply — the very picture of good humor. Without warning she hooked her arms through his, lifted him out of his chair, and plopped him on the bed just where he was supposed to be. She snapped out a sheet and tucked it around him.

He blinked in surprise. “You sho does move fast for a big woman.”

With one hand she spun the empty wheelchair into the corner. “You bet I do, Mr. Jack. Now then, I’ll be back to give you that shot, and I don’t want you goin’ anywhere till I do. You hear me?”

“Yassum.”

“Good!” She strapped the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and beamed at us. “Folks all right now? Everything all squared away?”

Dad couldn’t think of anything to say until she was almost out the door. He said, “But that doesn’t explain . . .” to her fast-retreating back.

“Lee,” Mom said. “Leave it alone.”

1
9

F
OUR KIDS IN A
Starlite Blue Pinto, off to see Sonny and Cher: Tim at the wheel, the ringleader, the class clown. His faithful sidekick Daniel riding shotgun. In the backseat, the beautiful Prom Queen, and beside her Rachel Bostick, the formerly obese and now merely fat girl whom Tim had selected as the most appropriate double date with Arnita. Rachel’s jaw had been wired shut for several months, as part of her new liquid diet. Already she’d lost more than sixty pounds. She wore a colorful Mama Cass muumuu that was too big for her now. She had learned to speak very distinctly for someone unable to open her mouth.

Arnita was dressed as a white girl — high heels, pantyhose, short skirt, pink sweater set. She looked a little silly and oh my God yummy. I wished I could take her straight down to the river and remove all her clothing, one item at a time.

Tim wore a black shirt, white satin tie with a piano-key pattern, skinny peg-legged black pants like the Beatles in their Liverpool days. I who never thought about clothes had on my usual dumb plaid shirt, jeans, black Converse high-tops.

Arnita said, “I’m so glad to finally spend some time with you, Tim. Daniel talks about you all the time.”

Tim’s jaw tightened. “Oh no, you’re the one he can’t stop talking about — Arnita Arnita Arnita, until we’re all blue in the face! But he keeps you hidden away like this big dark secret, no pun intended. I had to practically beg him to invite you tonight.”

“You did?” She turned to me. “Daniel?”

“No! It was my idea!” I said. What was he trying to do?

“Actually it was that ticket-seller woman, remember Skippy? That Yankee. She talked you into it.”

Arnita touched my shoulder. “Did you tell me this story?”

I opened my mouth but Tim got there first. “See, Daniel was nervous about how well an interracial couple would go over in public, considering where we are.”

“Where are we?” said Rachel.

“Mississippi.”

“Oh, right.”

He adjusted the mirror. “But the lady told him nobody would care. So here you are!”

“We’re not an interracial couple.” Arnita bopped me on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I thought it was no big deal. Tim was the one who said they still hurt people for that kind of stuff down here.”

“No two stories are the same,” said Tim. “It’s like Dealey Plaza.”

The great yellow flying saucer of the Coliseum glowed on the floodplain beneath the city. The parking lot streamed with cars. From this distance it looked glamorous — my mind sketched in palm trees, a range of purple Hollywood mountains, searchlights waving in the sky.

“Okay, now I’m getting excited,” I said. “Look at all these people! Tim, remember when we were afraid we’d be the only ones here?”

We whipped off the interstate at High Street, into a slow-moving river of Sonny and Cher fans flowing down to the fairgrounds. Tim drove to the farthest edge of the parking lot and parked the Pinto sideways across two parking spaces. “No door dings,” he said, getting out.

“Can’t be more than thirty miles to the Coliseum,” I said. “We can be there by Christmas.”

Rachel laughed. “Do y’all always get on each other like this?”

We fell in with a wide stream of people inching past tables stacked with Sonny and Cher T-shirts, posters, fancy souvenir programs. At ten bucks a pop, the program cost more than a ticket to the show — the world was changing in mysterious ways.

The ticket-takers were Shriners, old men in tiny red fezzes and red shorty vests. “Thank you joy the show,” they muttered, “thank you joy the show.” The lines at the snack bar stretched to the middle of next week. We followed the herd down a ramp into the dim vastness of the largest room in Mississippi.

“I hope we have good seats,” said Rachel.

Tim said, “It’s general admission.”

“Oh no — Timmy, why didn’t you say so? We should have been here hours ago! Now we’ll have to sit way up there!” She waved her hand at the distant balcony, which did appear to have the only seats without people in them.

Tim gawked. “This place is so huge, I never dreamed it would fill up this fast.”

“Are you crazy? Sonny and Cher are the hottest thing in the country. Their show’s number one, and they’ve got like five hits on the radio.”

“I thought me and Durwood were the only ones who liked them.”

“Who’s Durwood?”

“Never mind.” He rolled his eyes so only I could see.

“I don’t care where we sit,” said Arnita. “We’ll be fine.”

We climbed up and up, and kept going up. I didn’t look behind us at the dizzying drop. We found four seats together, near the ceiling. The stage was a little white patch, way way down there.

Rachel and Arnita chattered and gossiped like old pals while Tim and I made disparaging remarks about the people climbing up to sit near us. Tim kept leaning around Rachel to talk to me. Finally Rachel said, “Timmy, am I in your way?” and got up to swap seats with him.

Tim said, “Never mind, I’m gonna go take a look around. I’ll be back before it starts.” He trotted off down the steps toward the ramp.

He was gone quite a while. I entertained the girls with my imitations of Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali while keeping one eye out for Tim. From the way the stagehands were scurrying around, it looked like the show might start any minute. “I’ll go find him.” I slid past the girls’ knees. “He’s gonna miss the beginning.”

“Should I go with you?” Arnita said.

“You stay with Rachel. I’ll bring him right back.”

I leaned to kiss her — a soft kiss on the forehead, innocent as a kiss could be. My lips were still touching her when my eyes met the eyes of the woman four rows above us.

“Would you look at that?” She made no attempt to keep her voice down. “You’d think they’d have the decency not to do that in public!”

“Don’t look if it bothers you,” said her husband.

“Don’t it bother you?” the wife shot back.

I removed my lips from Arnita’s face and straightened up.

Arnita smiled. She’d heard every word. “Kiss me again,” she whispered.

“Later.”

“Why? It’s not against the law.”

I wasn’t trying to make a public statement. I was used to kissing her without thinking about it first.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, and fled, scattering feathers in my wake.

I ran into Tim at the foot of the ramp.

“Durwood, you’re psychic! I was coming to get you!”

“We better get back to our seats. The thing’s about to start.”

“Not quite yet, there’s some comedian that goes on first. Listen, I went exploring. There’s something you need to see.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t explain. Trust me, it is worth the trip.” He disappeared down the tunnel.

I caught up with him two levels below, just past the snack bar. “We’re gonna miss the show!”

“Would you trust me for once?” He led me to a door marked
PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER,
opened it, and pulled me through.

No alarm sounded. No guard came running.

“Where does this go?”

“Guess,” he said.

“Somewhere we’re not supposed to go.”

“Aw come on — ain’t you got just a little of that ol’ Skippy spirit left in you? Live a little, son. Take a chance! Come out of your hidey-hole!”

“But Tim —”

“My name is not Butt Tim.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Excuse me — Butt Face Tim. The girls are waiting for us, and there was this woman behind us —”

“Go back to the girls, then. Or shut up and come on!” He took off in a hurry and I followed, loping fast down hallways, down stairs, through a corridor that curved along the outer wall of the Coliseum.

Passing a cart piled with coils of electrical extension cord, Tim stopped to hoist one onto his shoulder. “You take one too. So it looks like we belong.”

The coil was heavier than it looked. I remarked that I made a much more plausible roadie than Tim in his artistic black clothes and piano tie.

“Next time I’ll dress like a slob to be on the safe side,” he said.

We came to a wide double door with sounds of people on the other side. “If they catch us,” I said, “will they kill us?”

“I don’t think so. Just give ’em your name, rank, and serial number.” He pushed through the door into another hallway. This was a backstage party featuring large hairy bearded men in motorcycle jackets, their skinny girlfriends, oily guys in suits, a sprinkling of flashy women who were dressed not unlike Carol Nason as Mary Magdalene. There were actual tie-dyed hippies with drawstring pants, sandals, mountain man hippie beards, tiny blue-tinted John Lennon specs.

Friends of Sonny and Cher! We never got to see people like this in Mississippi!

Tim hoisted his bundle of cord, nodding hello as we slowly pushed through the throng. The air was thick with smoke and cologne. I tried not to look like an out-of-place kid who is afraid of being discovered and thrown out. I kept patting my coil of cord as if to say, “This electrical cord is urgently needed at a nearby location.”

No one noticed us. I followed Tim straight through the party and out the other side. He opened the first door on the left. He waited for me to go in, then followed me.

He got this loopy satisfied grin on his face. “Do you see where we are?”

I saw a mirror framed in lightbulbs, a low dresser, three colossal flower arrangements, and half a dozen large trunks propped open, exploding with spangles, feathers, sequins, capes, hats.

“Her dressing room,” he said. “These are her costumes.”

“Oh shit — Tim! What the hell? Let’s get out of here! What if she —”

“Shh, sh sh sh shhhhh . . . keep it down, Durwood. I want to meet her.”

“Are you crazy? What if somebody came in right now, they’d think we’re trying to steal something!”

“But we’re not. Oh my God, look at this!” He lifted a bejeweled cap from its wig stand. “She wore this when she sang ‘My Funny Valentine.’ Remember? The week Joe Namath was the guest star?”

“Vaguely. I don’t have all the episodes memorized like you.”

The walls of the dressing room were draped in fringed paisley silk. A golden cherub dangled on a ribbon beside a bust of Cleopatra with broken-off nipples. There were snapshots of little Chastity taped around the edge of the mirror, and several framed, badly drawn portraits of Cher, obviously given to her by fans whose love for her exceeded their artistic ability. I thought it was nice of her to carry these homely pictures of herself on the road.

“Look at this one.” Tim picked up a satin-padded hanger holding two little sparkly strips of sequins.

“Wow. Big earrings.”

“Not earrings. It’s a costume.”

“No way!” I didn’t see how those two little bits could cover any significant part of a person. “I’d love to see her put that on.”

“Or take it off?” He jiggled the hanger to make the sequins dance. They were still dancing when Cher came through the door.

She wore a plain white T-shirt, tight hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans. She looked stunning with absolutely no makeup. She looked just like herself on TV only taller and younger — a girl, really. Not too much older than us. Long face, striking cheekbones. The most gorgeous tan in the history of skin.

The sight of Tim jiggling her costume stopped her. “Who gave you permission to play with my G-string?”

“Hey, nobody, sorry,” Tim stammered, replacing the hanger on the bar. “How you doing?”

“I’m fine — who the fuck are you?”

“Uhm, Tim.”

“Are you one of the new kids?”

“Brand-new,” he said with a sheepish grin. “And off to a really embarrassing start. Sorry.”

“No kidding,” she replied. “If this was Son’s dressing room and he caught you fucking around with his stuff he would kill you. What are you, a dancer?”

“We’re crew,” Tim said. “Jimmy told us to bring these extension cords in here, something about a stereo?” He was always so quick with a convincing tale. I hoped there was a Jimmy.

“The idea is for you to set it up before I get here,” said Cher. “So I can fuckin’
use
it. Not have the thrill of watching you guys install it.” I was impressed how many times Cher had already said the word “fuck.”

“Oh, we’re not installing it,” Tim said. “We just brought the extension cords.”

She threw herself down on the sofa. “Okay, fine. Thanks and get out.” We were halfway to the door when she said, “Wait a minute. That accent. Are you guys from here?”

Tim said, “Yeah.”

“Where are we again?”

“Uhm . . . you mean . . . ?”

“What city is this? Alabama?”

“No, this is Mississippi,” Tim said. “Jackson, Mississippi.”

“Oh, that’s right. God help us. How bad is it here?”

“How bad is what?”

“Don’t they hate black people down here? Half my dancers are black, you know. We never used to tour this far south.”

“Some people still do,” Tim said. “But the ones that do — they wouldn’t come to your show, I don’t think.”

“Oh good,” Cher said. “We don’t have many racists in California. I didn’t know what to expect. I was so afraid we’d run into Bull Connor all over the place, I wouldn’t let anybody bring pot on the bus even.”

Tim’s face lit up. “You like pot? I’ve got a joint.”

I knew Tim had kept smoking it after that first time in the Full Flower elevator, but I never dreamed he would try smuggling it into a concert.

Cher grinned. “Yeah?”

“You want to smoke it?”

“Well, hell yes,” she said.

“Cool!” He fished it from his shirt pocket.

Cool was hardly the word. Cher wanted to smoke a joint with us. Never in my wildest dreams! Now of course I had to smoke it. I didn’t have a choice. Cher’s eyes were remarkable, brown pools of feline intelligence. Just to be in the presence of someone this famous was causing a shrill whistling sound in my ears. My mind marched in circles on this dumb tootling Disney parade, as I floated up out of my body to picture myself standing there with Cher the real live Cher who was talking to Tim and peering over at me me
ME
ME! All of us people together in the same room!

Cher twiddled the joint between her long fingers. “Can I keep this for later? Is that terrible of me? If I smoke now, I’ll forget all the words to the songs. It’s not your last dope, is it?”