One Mississippi (32 page)

2
7

I
PACED BACK
and forth, screaming inside my head, How stupid to let yourself fall for her! Look what she turned out to be: a faithless mixed-up troublemaker of a girl, so confused and full of herself as to think she could reinvent black and white and make a whole new category just for herself!

She hated me so much she let Red Martin put his arm around her. How weak of me, to let her hurt me this much — to let myself care about her this much, when I’d known all along how damaged she was.

I should not care for anyone, ever. That’s the secret of a happy life: care about nobody, never get hurt.

I called Tim from the pay phone in the courtyard beside the library. I didn’t stop to ponder it. Too much had happened for me not to call. He picked up on the second ring.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi Daniel.”

“Should I call back? Your folks there?”

“Nope. Sitting here by myself.”

“Why’d you call me Daniel?”

“It’s still your name, right?”

“But not Skippy, or Dagwood, or —”

“Durwood. When were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“What you did to Red’s car.”

Okay. Here we go. “I thought you did that, Timmy.”

“Uh-uh. Not me. That was a hundred percent you, Skip.”

“Not me,” I lied.

“Sure it was,” he said easily. “You did it exactly like I would have. You’re the only one who would have done it that way.”

I felt a little welling of pleasure at the compliment, though his air of calm was unnerving. I meant to bluff my way through. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Aw come on, Skip — you think I’d be pissed at you? Forget it. How could you know they would blame it on me? Seriously, don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell anybody. I said it was me. I confessed the whole thing. Christ’s sake, we’re best friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” I said.

“That’s what best friends do for each other,” he said. “I’m taking the fall on this one.”

“Tim, that’s nuts.”

“You did it, I knew you did.” He laughed. “And it’s so damn brilliant I wish I
had
done it. Was it as great as I think? Tell me everything. Did it make a big boom?”

“Tim. You confessed because you thought you were covering up for me?”

“Of course. Now quit faking. We’re friends, remember? I know the hell out of you. I know you better than you do.”

“I don’t get it —”

“Oh Skippy! You are lying your ass off. Stop! I forgive you, okay? Jesus, it’s not like you set me up on purpose!”

No, not like that at all. “Tim —”

“Because how could you know I’d confess,” he said. “You kind of stumbled into committing the perfect crime. Where are you now?”

“School.”

“I’ll be there in three minutes.”

I never imagined Tim’s first reaction to my treachery would be this automatic loyalty to me. That he would take the whole crime on himself to keep me out of trouble. God, was he really that naive? Did it never occur to him that I might have set out to betray him? Mr. Paranoia, oblivious to his friend and sidekick Judas. What had I done to deserve such trust?

All I had to do now was go along with him. Let him take the fall, let the consequences work their steadying influence in his life, go on with our friendship as if nothing had happened.

Holy God. I could hardly believe my luck. I began to rejoice. My plan was working better than I imagined.

Here came the Starlite Blue Pinto streaking up Old Raymond Road. Tim popped open the passenger door, a little grin on his face. “Skippo! Where’d you get that bike?”

“Yard sale. Not bad, huh?” We hooked thumbs.

“Let me open the hatchback.”

I stowed the bike and got in, riding shotgun. I tucked my registration packet by my foot. Tim slammed in a Joni Mitchell tape and scratched off from the curb — only boy I know that can burn rubber in a Pinto while playing Joni Mitchell. Not that much rubber, but still.

He wore a black leather jacket over a ribbed undershirt that revealed his beanpole torso. He was whiter than pale, never any sun these days except for the occasional funeral. The shock of hair spilled over half of his face to the jawline, a big swoop like David Bowie’s hair, jet-black.

I said, “How was jail?”

“Deeeelightful,” he said in a nasal honk.

“Don’t do Eddie to me,” I said.

“Oh man, was that Eddie? Sorry.”

I blew out a sigh. “I can get out of this car, as you know.”

“Where have you been, Skip? I drove by that hellhole motel fifty zillion times. Y’all’s car is never there.”

I explained that we’d moved to a slightly less hellish place. I didn’t say where. I knew Tim would make horrible fun of the drive-in, and I wasn’t ready to hear it.

We turned onto the Old Vicksburg Road, heading west with no destination. Tim described how he’d had to invent some details of his confession to Detective Magill. “They found part of a Clorox bottle. What did you use bleach for? I said to wipe off fingerprints.”

“I poured it out,” I said. “I just needed the bottle to put the gas in.”

“Ah.” A sly smile to acknowledge my admission.

“You should have seen it blow,” I said. “It was incredible.”

“Oh come on, Skippy, tell me everything.”

“Tim. This is bad trouble you’re in. We’ve gotta straighten this out.”

“I said forget it, okay? You would do the same thing for me, right?”

Yes, I said. Maybe my biggest lie yet.

Tim wasn’t faking. He wasn’t even angry. He seemed as cheerful, in fact, as I’d seen him in months. A new lightness about him, a carefree tone in his voice. He had replaced the Carpenters sticker on the dashboard with a cutout of Suzi Quatro in a leather corset, but all he wanted to listen to was this mournful album
Blue.

I told him all the details, the reconnaissance, planning, and execution. I told him about the lengths I went to, to give him an alibi. He listened intently and shrugged it off.

One night in jail seemed to have loosened him up, relaxed him. As if he was finally free of some long-standing worry.

I would never forgive him for Arnita. But what did he really do that was wrong? He just told her the truth — as I should have done, long ago. Getting rid of her that way was mean, but it was also the right thing. He offered me the chance to tell her myself, and I didn’t have the courage. Tim was right, Arnita deserved better than a lie.

We zipped over the tops of round hills, a deep goldy end-of-summer green. Tim thought it was hilarious that the band would be playing “Hail to the Chief” for Nixon later in September. He pointed out that he had already done more time in jail than Nixon.

I told him how Arnita’s little speech on the subject of her whiteness had sent the assembly into an uproar.

“She always did like an uproar,” he said.

And guess who was waiting for her at the stage door?

“Oh no. Oh man, you’re kidding. Oh, poor Skippy — Christ, what a kick in the balls! Listen, don’t you worry about it. It’s all gonna work out. I just know it is.”

“How can it work out? Don’t be stupid. She hates me.”

“And now she thinks she’s white? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Ever since the accident.”

“She always did act kind of white,” Tim said. “That’s how she got so popular. I bet she has more white friends than black ones.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. She’s not the same person at all. She’s this other girl named Linda. At least some of the time. She’s better now.”

“Durwood, you need to stay far, far away from this girl, okay? Trust me on this. She is extremely crazy.”

“Not crazy. Brain-damaged. We were there, remember?”

Usually when I brought up Prom Night, Tim glared as if he’d like to slug me. Now he just sadly shook his head. “And you’re as stuck on her as ever.”

“I guess so.”

“Jail wasn’t as bad as you’d think,” he said. “You sit in a little room with bars on the door, what’s wrong with that? They bring you books to read, beanie-weenies and potato salad for supper. Better than my mother would’ve fixed.”

He acted cavalier about it, not like someone who had learned any lesson at all.

The hills began to roll higher and deeper, the two-lane swooping down a long descent from the forest into a gathering of gas stations and small motels. A sign pointed the way to Vicksburg National Military Park.

Tim said, You wanna?

I said, Why not. At the visitor center we bought Cokes and paused to admire the diorama of the rat-eating citizens of Vicksburg.

Driving through a columned arch, we crossed onto federal property — you could tell by the smooth new asphalt and the groomed swales of grass flanking the road. Poor Mississippi couldn’t afford such swanky roads.

The hills of the battlefield were studded with monuments to the dead. Around every bend was a grand vista leading to another magnificent obelisk. The monuments of the victorious Yankees were larger and more elaborate than the Southern ones. Illinois had gotten entirely carried away with a full-scale Pantheon in white marble at the head of about five hundred steps.

Every little while along the park drive was a turnout, a clearing with a line of cannon and a historical marker to explain which part of the battle was fought here. We passed row after row of white headstones in the national cemetery, all the dead from the battle and many more besides. Now we could taste the muddy air off the river. The road curved steeply up and around to the highest ground for miles, Fort Hill.

We parked, and walked to the crest of the ridge. Cannon glared out over the wide brown glittering river. This hill commanded the bend in the river for miles. The view stretched on forever to the west.

I pushed the red button set into the annotated map. “With these cannon,” a scratchy deep voice intoned, “the Army of Vicksburg under General Pemberton controlled navigation on the mighty Mississippi, and earned this sleepy riverside village the title Fortress of the Confederacy. . . .”

Tim boosted himself up onto the speaker slots, muffling the voice with his butt. “Mm-hm,” he said, wiggling. “Keep talking!”

I sighted down the tapering barrel of the cannon to a tiny barge, way down there on the wide muddy river. “Give me powder and a ball, sir,” I cried, “and I’ll blow that thar Yankee to hay-dees!”

Tim grinned. “I’ll give you a ball! You’re really into this stuff, huh Durwood. How you know so much about it?”

Earlier he’d made fun of me for trying to explain Grant’s flanking movements downriver. “There’s these things called books. If you look inside ’em you’ll find all these words?”

“But you act like you really care about all this! Aren’t you happy the South got the shit kicked out of it?” He raised his invisible rifle and squeezed off a shot. “I’m not sure it really matters. Like the Indians. I know the white man slaughtered ’em all. I know I ought to care. I just don’t.”

I started telling him how my great-grandpa Otis P. Musgrove walked home from Chickamauga on his shot leg, but he didn’t care about that either.

“Would you die for the right to own a slave, Durwood?”

“Heck no. I’m a Yankee. You know that.”

“No you’re not. If your grandpa’s a Reb, you’re one of us. You were born in Alabama, dammit. Try to act like it. Would you die for Alabama?”

“No way,” I said. “It’s just a place. I’m not gonna die for a
place.
Anyway, what would I want with a slave?”

“Well, I think we have learned that would be your type.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Touché, dickhead.” I took a swipe at him.

He used his imaginary machine gun to mow down dozens of Yankees charging up the face of Fort Hill. “What would you die for, Skip?”

I’d never thought about it, and I told him so.

“Well, think about it,” he said.

“I don’t want to. I kinda like the idea of not dying. At least not for a while.”

“I’m serious. Is there anything on earth you’d be willing to give up your life for?”

I considered all the immediate possibilities.

“The country?” I ventured. “I mean, if we got attacked. Like Pearl Harbor. And if we all had to fight, I would go. Not with Nixon in charge, though. And not to Vietnam, thank you very much. That looks like no fun at all.” I thought of Bud with his lucky bad foot, which had kept him at the base in California so far. His last postcard said he was learning to surf.

“Anything else? What if someone came in and tried to murder your family, like
In Cold Blood.
Would you die to stop ’em?”

“They’re gonna murder the whole family, or just some of them? Do I get to choose which ones?”

He boosted himself up to straddle the cannon. “What if it was me? What if somebody was trying to kill me, and you might get killed trying to stop ’em? Would you do it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You would?”

“Sure. You’d do the same for me, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “All right. That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Why?”

“No reason.” He had a goofy smile, unaccountably happy. “I knew that’s what you would say.” He peered down at the black cast iron barrel emerging from between his legs. “Here’s what you need, Durwood. Here’s what that girl really wanted. Look here.” He patted it, stroked it.

“Not funny,” I said.

Tim hopped off the cannon. He pushed the red button. “With these cannon, the Army of Vicksburg under General Pemberton controlled navigation on the mighty Mississippi . . .”

The Vicksburg Dairy Dog was just like the one back home. We ordered burgers, onion rings, coffee. Evening was falling, but inside the Dog was bright as noon. Dad would kill me for going AWOL from the Twi-Lite. Too bad. I would just have to get killed. Janie and I had spent the whole weekend helping him clean up his damn drive-in, and now I had declared an afternoon off for myself.

Janie! Oh God. I’d promised her a ride home after school, then forgot her completely. I wondered how long she stood there waiting for me, after I’d ordered her not to keep me waiting.

Ah well. She’s my sister, she’ll just have to get over it.

We got back in the Pinto. “Where to?” I said.