White People (11 page)

I scanned his room. Boy-Proof. For once, it looked significant and enviable, nationally advertised. I speed-read left to right: Raiders. Yield. Visit Orton Plantation. Wolverines. Harvard. Go Back, Wrong Way. Luther Hodges for Governor. Shoplifters Prosecuted. Love
Those Tar heels. See Castle of Reptiles, a educational must for kids visiting Florida. God Bless This Mess. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Food. Dr. Ornstein Dentist Patient Parking. Wolfpack. So, I thought.

Just then he looked up. I felt awkward, sneaky. He never came to my room unless invited. Half in his doorway, half in our hall, I stood, eager for some quick sign of approval despite our differences. I needed just one word, a nod from him, then I’d leave. I smiled, uneasy. I said, “Hi.”

In his magnifying lens, the toothpick tipped with glue stayed poised just opposite the tweezers prongs. Propped on elbows, he lay watching me, awaiting what I’d say next. I couldn’t think of a thing, not a single thing that might concern or interest or amuse him. I just grinned. His eyes, in one downward sweep, sped across my visor, binoculars, notebook, knee socks, new tan boots. His vision scraped across these and me, like the downward opening swipe of some surgical instrument made specially for that. As I hung here, smarting in the doorway, he leisurely turned back, a blond boy as in magazines; his whole concentration swerved around and fell again upon that useless plastic USS
Enterprise
and, quietly, still poking half-dried glue, he mumbled one word, “Weird.”

F
OUR DAYS LATER
, the family brain was taking a shortcut across the school ground, hurrying home with three new public library books tucked under his arm, walking in a pompous almost military step, having just read something really great about a drummer boy, twelve years old, who’d saved the day at an African fort. Since school let out, only pigeons huddled here in daily attendance, chalking up the windowsills and bas-reliefs. All season, there’d been an epidemic among pigeons at Gorham Elementary. You’d see one lose its footing on a third-floor gutter, then fall, flapping spastic out into the sunlight, hooting for its friends and family. But, nested in brick niches, the others never seemed to notice. I asked my teacher what we could do about this, about our school’s birds being so sick, and Miss Whipple said, “Not one thing, Bryan. It’s nice that you’re tenderhearted. But pigeons just aren’t like our friends the bluebirds and
cardinals. I say, good riddance.” That spring a pair of pigeons, still healthy enough, had chosen our windowsill as the perfect sunny spot to mate. Miss Whipple busily pretended not to hear our class tittering. Then she dropped her spelling book, lunged madly shrieking toward the window, slapped the glass so hard we thought she’d slashed her hand to spite the springtime, to punish us for underestimating phonics, for noticing the world itself.

Soldiers at a tribal outpost get pounced by local Africans. Way outnumbered, the whole English regiment is blow-gunned, speared, or hit hard by fever; all but the drummer boy. He sets up rifles in the fort’s lookout towers, then pulls the strings attached to far-flung triggers, making natives think that seven able-bodied men still stand—not just one thin resourceful boy. Two days later, owing to hunger and blow darts, he begins seeing things. But just then, reinforcements announce themselves, a whinny of bagpipes eddies far across the veldt, terrifying superstitious villagers. Into the fort thunder drums, tartan kilts, and muskets. All congratulations for the boy. When he sees his comrades propped up, revived, attended to, the hero keels right over, dead asleep after weeks of perfect duty. The soldiers carry him upstairs and tuck him into the big bed of a valiant general, speared earlier. Clean silk sheets, it said. “A stout-hearted lad, and true.” Stirring to think of days when that old brand of bravery still held … held on just long enough to get a person appreciated by a person’s replacements.

Miss Whipple, the librarian part-time, had said, Your reading speed is really picking up again, and I’d said, Yes, ma’am, I think it is. The eaves of Gorham Elementary hummed and cooed and crackled pigeon life. I turned a corner briskly: now, to practice speeding up my stride with the rudder-true trajectory of a fast-reading eye. I passed some shadows, heard a groan, and stopped. Four kids there, two holding the arms of one, another lifting a white pigeon into the face of the middle kid, and Bradley’s eyes and mouth were pressed totally shut. He cringed just beyond Jimmy Otis’s fat fist where the bird was shuddering, sick. I took three steps into the shade and stood right alongside, simply watching. My being there changed nothing. Two boys Bradley’s own age kept wrenching
his arms, lifting these straight up behind, so he now stood almost daintily on tiptoe. Brother’s head strained as far to one side as it would twist, neck muscles bulged, the bird’s scarlet beak nearly touching a tense spot just beneath his earlobe. It seemed some peculiar injection.

“All right,” I said. Otis looked squarely at me and winked. He was famous even among sixth graders for his innovative meanness. Rumor claimed he’d given his own mother a black eye; she was just twelve years his senior, and tragically she just looked like him. Now Otis jammed the pale bird closer, crushing its soft breast against my brother’s right ear and rigid neck.

“All right.” I cleared my throat, tried to age my voice, imitating the austere if kindly Miss Whipple. “I guess you guys couldn’t know it, but, see, Bradley’s got allergies. At least he used to have some, to bees, things like that. And this might be fun and all for you, but it could be kind of dangerous for him. You probably didn’t even know that, right? So let’s just break this up, okay?” Enthusiastically, I answered myself, “Okay.”

“Yeah?” whined a bony kid hoisting Bradley’s left wrist even higher. “You and who else’s army?”

“Hey, Leo,” Otis snapped, “un-lax your mouth, why don’t you?” The whole group, still in their odd pose, now shuffled around to get a better view of me. They rotated Bradley who did a little jig because of pain. Otis turned, his freckled cheeks tensed fat, half smile, half not. He aimed the pigeon headfirst at me, as if he held a flashlight or a ray gun beaming sickness. They all looked me over. I wished I were carrying a basketball. Actually these reading glasses should be in my pocket probably.

Across the pigeon’s amber eyes, a bluish film eased up in tugs, then lowered, shuddering. Even healthy white pigeons can look quite sickly. This bird’s bill seemed polished, a cheerful red, waxy as red licorice, but in the nostril dents, each breath rattled two small crescents of foam, then sucked these back.

“Know what we got here? This here’s what you call a dead duck,” Otis told me as I studied it, my sadness undisguised. “It’s going to croak in about one minute. Might as well get some use out of it now,
right?” Grinning evenly at me, he lifted the bird, pinched its head between two yellow fingers and, using the steadied beak, scratched one side of his close-cropped scalp. A sound like coarse sandpaper’s I glared at Bradley, my signal for him to run. I’d told him not to play with this pack of kids. I’d told him.

Brother’s face observed me; his neck had relaxed, but the chest, I saw, still heaved in a striped shirt I’d outgrown. Cars passed, other pigeons flapped in gutters overhead. Then Bradley jerked free. The two kids reached for him, but Otis waved them back. Instead of running home, brother took a single step toward me. Otis, interested, put hands on hips, one fist bunched around white feathers that kept rustling in spasms.

Bradley’s eyes showed me the clear familiar blue of mine, but his seemed brighter, set inside a better tan. Now everybody glumly faced me. Things had somehow switched around. How? Bradley lifted both his hands and placed these on my shoulders, fingertips and just the weight of wrists. It felt odd, like some Indian greeting from the movies. Otis squinted. The other two, knowing we were brothers, seemed embarrassed, witnessing this peculiar embrace.

“Hey,” I asked my brother, “you all right?” But, looking down at him, I couldn’t quite remember why I’d interrupted. And, for an instant, it seemed that Bradley had stepped in, was saving me.

One strong simple shove, no harder than necessary. It knocked me straight back. My glasses dropped into my lap, books skidded through dust. After a moment of just sky, green copper gutters, I sat, eyes lifted toward his. The others stooped, eager to see us fight, their fists raised automatically. They stared from him to me, but mostly now at Bradley, and with new regard. I sat aimed at brother’s plump brown face, the fringe of ringlets. His chubby fingers balled to fists. We’d hardly ever looked so squarely at each other. Usually before, it was side by side, his curly hair and shoulders lower than me, or I’d been peering out ahead for small dangers in our way. Now, unwilling to cry or ask questions, I stayed where he had pushed me. They were standing. I was here, down here.

“Okay,” Otis said, “let’s us go someplace else, guys.”

He turned. They all did. Bradley, too. Over one shoulder, Otis
tossed the pigeon. It scrambled in a crazy arc, then thudded, landing on its breast, left wing fanned out complicatedly, right pinned underneath. The crew shambled away, and one of his tormentors now gave Bradley’s upper arm a playful jab, and murmured, “I’d of done that harder but I’d of done that.”

“Shut your trap, Leo,” Otis told him, then glanced back at me, a look too casual to even show contempt. I crouched and started gathering my books, not wanting to seem dazed. Then I stood and brushed myself off. No harm done, happens all the time. But they’d passed toward the jungle gym, beyond the school.

I squatted now, stacked the books, evening their lower edges with a few jaunty taps on my knee. I’m not hurt. And Bradley’s not hurt. So everything’s all right. I noticed my summer shorts, the bare legs. They didn’t seem mine, just shapes in the corner of a picture. I sat back down. The bird, with one exerted twist, righted itself and hobbled, zigzagging into the building’s shadow. Its white turned a strong blue. The pigeon listed, shuddering, but its arched iridescent head pulled along the body, and with this pathetic dignity. It tipped into a dry cement drainage trench beside the wall and scuttled over debris till, finally settling, it tilted against mossy bricks. I watched the bird’s back fill and shrink, quick croupy breaths.

One side in shadow, one side out, my own sunny half was warm. Dust clung softly to the under edge of both my legs. I felt groggy, troubled but relieved. It seemed I’d been hurrying past this spot, bound on a vague urgent errand, aware as in a dream of some crucial appointment or deadline. I’d been moving briskly, pompous with a compliment the librarian had paid, thinking about African heroics; and now, my unstated mission felt abruptly canceled or accomplished. I could sit here as long as I wanted. I could read all these books right here, or sleep, anything.

I lifted my new glasses from the dust, wiped these on my shirt, slipped them into my pocket, patted it. I did feel tired.

Let him take care of his own self. Or maybe one of those Southside river rats would do it for him. Let them stuff dying birds down his throat for all I cared. Or force those fat hands into jars of wasps, even scorpions. Let earthquakes, Mack trucks, jungle fever, let anything that wants him have him. Good riddance. Sleepily and out loud, I said, “Okay, Bradley.”

To walk five blocks home seemed an ordeal just now. I needed time to think what I’d do next. Evening was here, a chill. Shadows had wheeled around and over me already. I neatly piled the books, then lay down for a minute, my head resting on them, dusty legs pulled neatly up against my chest.

I
LLEGALLY
, a car drove onto the school yard. Its lights shone just above me. A huge shape bent down now, wouldn’t stop this shaking, my head wobbling side to side. Someone leapt from the front seat, came flapping over, and I was down among their legs, a grove of adult legs cutting through the light, throwing vertical shadows long as walls.

“What has happened, baby? What has actually happened, here, darling?”

He stopped shaking me so I could answer her. “I fell asleep, I think. I got so sleepy.” And I tried to stand, but he didn’t believe I could and he picked me up, off the ground, for the first time in years. His voice: “Are those your books, Bryan?” I nodded, “The library’s,” and I put my arms around his solid neck. The car’s back door flipped open and a short person got out and walked around and stood in front between the headlights, hands on hips, all silhouette. Who’s that? Mother got the books and she came running alongside. “Are you sick, darling? Here, let me feel,” and her hand tried resting on my forehead, but I kept bouncing toward the car in Father’s arms, and her warm fingers clamped over my eyes, my mouth. She wrapped me in the itchy tartan football blanket. She propped me on the backseat and climbed in front, but leaned over, her beautiful hands so good at needlework and bridge. Father gunned the engine; then that squatty other person crawled through the back door, slammed it, sat right across from me. Father drove slowly and
Mother spoke in bursts, “We didn’t know. The sun had set. I called the library. I even phoned poor Harriet Whipple at home. She loves you. Oh, Bryan mine, we were so unbelievably worried.”

Over there in one corner. Back pressed to the door. Some little man. His arms crossed. Looking over here at me. Some midget in a striped shirt. Face all shadowed. Mother still yammering. I knew her. I knew Father. But who was this one watching me? Father almost stopped when, purely terrified, I dove over the seat and nestled between their sides, keeping low to hide from that one in back, a little man, a little midget gangster, midget monster midget.

“Richard, see how he’s shaking? Poor thing is scared to death. Bryan, sit up. Bryan mine, now listen to me. You can tell us. Tell Mother, did some grown-up try to do something to you? Did some man
do
something to you, Bry?”

I sobbed and sobbed. “Oh my God,” she said, “a man.” They carried me to bed. Father did. He bent over and said to keep that extra blanket, anything I wanted, and to sleep, just sleep. That would mend me fine. He gave me two kisses, one over each eye, and a big one in the middle of my forehead. Sleep, he said. He propped the door half open using my desk chair. He left. Then I heard it. Odd noises. Someone opening and closing drawers. Some stranger in the next room moving all the furniture around. I lay listening, too frightened to call for help, but trying very hard to. Call. For. That. With all my strength, I wished for sleep.