Boy's Life (78 page)

     “Listen   here!” Mr. Lightfoot’s voice was stern, his brow furrowed with disapproval. “Don’t  you      gimme    no      sass!” With the miniature hammer he clunked the screw holes, and Mr. Moultry lost another few ounces as his pants suddenly got wet. Then Mr. Lightfoot gripped the tail fins with both hands and pulled.

     Slowly, with a thin high
skrreeeeek
of resistance, the bomb’s tail section began to slide out. It was hard work, and Mr. Lightfoot had to pause to stretch his cramping fingers. Then he went back to it, with the determination of a sloth gripping a tree branch. At last the tail section came free, and exposed were electronic circuits, a jungle of different-colored wires, and shiny black plastic cylinders that resembled the backs of roaches.

     “Hoooowheeee!” Mr. Lightfoot breathed, enchanted. “Ain’t it pretty?”

     “Killin’ me…” Mr. Moultry moaned. “Killin’ me dead…”

     The rasping was louder. Mr. Lightfoot used a metal probe to touch a small red box from which the noise emanated. Then he used his finger, and he whistled as he drew the finger back. “Oh-oh,” he said. “Gettin’ kinda      warm.”

     Mr. Moultry began to blubber, his nose running and the tears trickling from his swollen eyes.

     Mr. Lightfoot’s fingers were at work again, tracing the wires to their points of origin. The smell of heat rose into the air, which shimmered over the red box. Mr. Lightfoot scratched his chin. “Y’know,” he said, “I believe      we     gots us      a      problem      here.”

     Mr. Moultry trembled on the edge of coma.

     “See, I”—Mr. Lightfoot tapped his chin, his eyes narrowed with concentration—“fix      things.    I    don’t      break ’em.” He drew in a long breath and slowly released it. “Gone have ta       do       a little       breakin’, seems ta me.” He nodded. “Yessuh.    Sure      do hate      ta break somethin’      so pretty.” He chose another, larger hammer. “Gone      have      ta      do it.” He cracked the hammer down on the red box. Its plastic skin split from one end to the other. Mr. Moultry’s teeth gripped his tongue. Mr. Lightfoot removed the two plastic sections and regarded the smaller workings and wires within. “Jus’       mysteries       in mysteries,” he said. He put his hand down into the toolbox and it came out holding a little wire cutter that still had its ninety-nine-cent price sticker on it. “Now,       listen    good,” he told the bomb, “don’t     you      burp      in   my   face,    hear?”

     “Ohhhhh God, oh Jeeeesus above, oh I’m comin’ to heaven, I’m comin’,” Mr. Moultry gasped.

     “You get there,” Mr. Lightfoot said with a faint smile, “you       tell  St. Peter       he’s       got   a      fix-it-man       on the way.” He reached the cutter toward two wires—one black, the other white—that crisscrossed at the heart of the machine.

     “
Wait
,” Mr. Moultry whispered. “Wait…”

     Mr. Lightfoot paused.

     “Gotta get it off my soul,” Mr. Moultry said, his eyes as bugged as the minstrel’s. “Gotta get light, so I can fly to heaven. Listen to me…”

     “Listenin’,” Mr. Lightfoot told him as the bomb spoke on.

     “Gerald and me… we… it was Gerald did the most of it, really… I didn’t wanna have nothin’ to do with it… but… it’s set to go off at… ten in the mornin’… day after Christmas. Hear me? Ten in the mornin’. It’s a box… full of dynamite… and an alarm clock timer. We paid Biggun Blaylock, and he… he got it for us.” Mr. Moultry swallowed, perhaps feeling hell’s fire under his buns. “It’s set to blow up that civil rights museum. We… it was all Gerald’s idea, really… decided to do it when we first heard the Lady was plannin’ on buildin’ it. Listen to me, Lightfoot!”

     “Listenin’,” he said slowly and calmly.

     “Gerald planted it, somewhere around that museum. Could be in the recreation center. I don’t know where it is, I swear to God… but it’s over there right now, and it’s gonna go off at ten in the mornin’, day after Christmas.”

     “That right?” Mr. Lightfoot asked.

     “Yes! It’s the truth, and God take me to heaven ’cause I’ve freed my soul!”

     “Uh-huh.” Mr. Lightfoot reached out. He gripped the black wire with the cutter and
snip
, the black wire was parted. The bomb, however, would not be silenced so easily.

     “Do you hear me, Lightfoot? That box of dynamite is over there right this minute!”

     Mr. Lightfoot eased the cutter’s blades around the white wire. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and sweat sparkled on his cheeks like diamond dust. He said, “No,      it      ain’t.”

     “Ain’t what?”

     “Over       there.       Not        no   more.       Done    found   it.       Gone   cut     this     wire      now.” His hand trembled. “Might blow       if      I’ve       cut    the       wrong wire      first.”

     “God have mercy,” Mr. Moultry whined. “Oh Jesus I swear I’ll be a good boy every day of my life if you just let me live!”

     “I’m         cuttin’,” Mr. Lightfoot said.

     Mr. Moultry squeezed his eyes shut. The cutter went
snip
.

     KA-BOOOMMMMM!

     In that tremendous roar of destruction and fire, Mr. Moultry screamed.

     When his screaming wound down, he heard not the harps of the angels nor the devils singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” He heard: “Heh  heh heh       heh.”

     Mr. Moultry’s eyes flew open.

     Mr. Lightfoot was grinning. He blew a little flicker of blue flame from the snipped end of the white wire. The bomb was tamed and mute. Mr. Lightfoot spoke in a voice made hoarse by the tremendous yell he’d just yelled into Mr. Moultry’s ear. “Beggin’      your pardon,       suh,” he said. “Jus’       couldn’t       pass it      up.”

     Mr. Moultry seemed to deflate, as if he’d been punctured. With a slow hissing sound, he fainted dead away.

5
Sixteen Drops of Blood

I’M BACK.

     The time bomb box full of dynamite—with an extra stick thrown in from the gracious hand of Biggun Blaylock—had indeed been found, not long after I had informed the Lady who my dream visitors were. I must’ve remembered that picture and kept it in the back of my head, and then after the cross-burning and my witnessing Mr. Hargison and Mr. Moultry buy the box from Biggun Blaylock, I must’ve known subconsciously what the box was. That’s why I’d taken to knocking my alarm clock off my bedside table. The only hitch in this theory is that I’d never seen pictures of the girls who’d died at the 16th Street Baptist Church until at the museum. I don’t think. Maybe they were in the
Life
magazine. Mom had thrown it out, though, so I can’t say for sure.

     The Lady put it together as soon as I’d told her. She organized everyone at the reception to start looking for a wooden box either in the recreation center, the civil rights museum, or in the vicinity outside. Nobody could find it, and we tore that place up searching. Then the Lady recalled that Mr. Hargison was a postman. Right outside the center, on the corner of Buckhart Street, was a mailbox. Charles Damaronde held Gavin by his heels as he slid into the mailbox, and we heard his muffled voice say, “Here it is!” He couldn’t bring it up, though, because it was too heavy. Sheriff Marchette was called, and he came with Zephyr’s postmaster, Mr. Conrad Oatman, who brought the mailbox key. In that box was enough dynamite to blow up the recreation center, the civil rights museum, and two or three houses across the street. Evidently, four hundred dollars was enough to buy a mighty big bang.

     Mr. Hargison, knowing what times the mail was picked up and that the mailbox would not be opened again until sometime on the afternoon of December 26th, had set the alarm clock timer for ten on the dot. Sheriff Marchette said the bomb had been constructed by a professional, because you could adjust the timer to either twelve, twenty-four, or forty-eight hours. He told the Lady that he didn’t want Mr. Hargison or Mr. Moultry to know the bomb had been found yet, not until the innards were dusted for fingerprints. Mom and I had told Dad when we’d gotten home from the recreation center, and I have to say that both he and Sheriff Marchette did a good job of not spilling the beans when they were at Dick Moultry’s house and Mr. Hargison walked in. Mr. Moultry’s confession turned out to be the icing on the cake, since the time bomb yielded five prints that perfectly matched Mr. Hargison’s. So those two were taken off pretty soon to visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Birmingham, and needless to say their names were ticked off the roster of the residents of my hometown.

     The civil rights museum had its grand opening. I had no more dreams of the four black girls. But if I ever wanted to see them again, I knew where to go.

     The falling of the bomb from a jet plane and the finding of a Ku Klux Klan bomb in a mailbox outside the civil rights museum kept Zephyr buzzing in the days following Christmas. Ben, Johnny, and I debated whether Mr. Lightfoot had ever been really afraid of the bomb or not. Ben said he had been, while Johnny and I took the position that Mr. Lightfoot was like Nemo Curliss; instead of baseball, though, Mr. Lightfoot’s natural affinity was to anything mechanical, even a bomb, so when he stared those wires down he knew exactly what he was doing every second. Ben, incidentally, had had an interesting experience in Birmingham. He and his mom and dad had stayed with Ben’s uncle Miles, who worked at a downtown bank. Miles had given Ben a tour of the vault, and all Ben could talk about was the smell of money, how green it was and how pretty. He said Miles had actually let him hold a pack of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills, and Ben’s fingers were still tingling. Ben announced that he didn’t know what he was going to do in this life, but as far as possible it was going to involve lots and lots of money. Johnny and I just laughed at him. We missed Davy Ray, because we knew what his comment would’ve been.

     Johnny had asked for and received two Christmas presents. One was a policeman’s kit, complete with honorary badge, fingerprint powder, handcuffs, burglar dust that got on the shoes of burglars and only showed up under ultraviolet light, and a policeman’s handbook. The other was a wooden display case with little shelves in it, to show his arrowhead collection. He filled it up except for one shelf, which was reserved for a certain smooth black arrowhead if Chief Five Thunders ever decided to give it up again.

     A question remained about Mr. Lightfoot and the bomb. Mom voiced it two nights after Christmas, as a cold rain fell on Zephyr.

     “Tom?” she said. We were all sitting in the front room, with the fireplace blazing. You couldn’t have pried
The Golden Apples of the Sun
out of my hands with a crowbar. “What made Mr. Lightfoot go to Dick Moultry’s house, anyway? I wouldn’t have thought that was somethin’ he might’ve volunteered to do.”

     Dad didn’t answer.

     Just as parents have sixth senses about their children, so, too, do children about their parents. I lowered my book. Dad continued to read the newspaper.

     “Tom? Do you know what made Mr. Lightfoot do it?”

     He cleared his throat. “Kind of,” he said quietly.

     “Well, what was it?”

     “I guess… I had somethin’ to do with it.”

     “
You
did? How?”

     He lowered the paper, realizing there was no way out but the truth. “I… asked the Lady for help.”

     Mom sat in stunned silence. Rain struck the windows and the fireplace log popped, and still she didn’t budge.

     “I figured she was the only chance Dick had. After what she did with Biggun Blaylock’s ammo bag… I thought she could help him. And I was right, it appears. She called Marcus Lightfoot while I was there at her house.”

     “Her
house?
I can’t believe this! You went to the Lady’s house?”

     “Not just to it. Inside it. I sat down in her chair. I drank a cup of her coffee.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was expectin’ shrunken heads on the walls and black widow spiders in every corner. I didn’t know she was
religious
.”

     “To the Lady’s house,” Mom said. “I just can’t believe it! And after all this time when you were so afraid of her!”