One Mississippi (33 page)

“Anywhere you want.” Tim turned to look at me. “You got any ideas?”

“Not really. I guess home. School tomorrow.”

“I’m not going tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll go Friday, I think. I’m pretty sure I won’t go before Friday.”

I said, “Want to take the interstate back? It’s faster.”

“Yeah, we could,” he said. “Or else, I don’t know. What do you feel like?”

That was an innocent question. I don’t know why my skin prickled up in gooseflesh. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by it.

Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the car. I rolled down my window and groped for the dashboard and switched on the radio — a crash of loud static. I twisted the dial and landed on a station playing Jackie Wilson, “Say You Will.”

I turned it up loud. We rode without talking. If you drive eighty on the interstate, you can get back to Minor in no time.

Finally I said, “I’m having a hard time getting over what you did,” I said. “She’s pretty special to me.”

“I know, Skippy,” he said. “And I appreciate you giving me another chance. I’ll take you on home, if you want. Where is home these days, anyway?”

“You can drop me at the Jitney Jungle. I’m supposed to buy food for the house. Mom went to Alabama to see her family for a few days.”

“I’ll take you to the store and then home. I don’t mind.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“What’s the big secret, Mumwood? How come you don’t want me to know where you live?”

“It’s kind of a dump. I don’t think we’ll be staying there long. Did you say you’re not coming to school tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure I’m even coming back to school,” Tim said.

I stared at him. “What?”

“I’m just not sure.” His face looked paler than before.

I switched off the radio. “What are you talking about?”

He put on a tight little smile. “You didn’t look in your packet, huh?”

“Packet?”

“Registration.”

“What about it? It’s right here.”

“You found it in your locker, right? Just like every year on the first day of school.”

“Yeah.”

“But didn’t you find a little something extra? In your locker, on top of your packet? A couple of extra pages, stapled together?”

“I thought some of it fell out. I didn’t look at it yet. What are you talking about?”

“It’s a gift from Red,” he said. “His latest project. Apparently he’s been busy over at the Xerox place making up a bunch of them. He must have got to school real early this morning. He managed to put a copy in every single locker.”

“Tim —” I pulled out two pages, stapled together. He turned on the dome light.

Police Incident Report, Sheriff’s Department, Hinds County.

The date at the top was November 23, 1972.

Arrestee: Cousins, Timothy R. Case number 000385-22F-1972.

Offense: Indecent exposure.

Offense: Unnatural intercourse.

Offense: Open and gross lewdness in a public place.

Offense: Sodomy, second degree.

“What is this?” I said.

“It’s fairly self-explanatory.” Tim kept his eyes on the road. “Or at least Red seemed to think so.”

Location of offense: Rest Area #183N, I-55 South.

Suddenly I grasped what Tim was trying to tell me. All over Minor, students were finding copies of this report with their permission slips, sign-up sheets, the fall football schedule.

Tim told me he’d been arrested once before, at Thanksgiving. Reckless driving, he said. Spent a night in jail. They’d suspended his license.

No mention of driving anywhere on this page.

REPORTING OFFICER’S NARRATIVE
(Brief narrative of the facts surrounding the offense and the arrest)


At 9:20 PM, Reporting Officer (R/O) was conducting undercover vice operations when he observed arrestee loitering near the restroom building. R/O was approached by arrestee, who made overt sexual advances. R/O declined, returned at 9:45 PM to find arrestee loitering with another subject, engaged in public lewdness and indecent exposure, specifically masturbating in view of the officer. Arrestee again made overt sexual advances. R/O placed subject under arrest and escorted arrestee to vehicle. Arrestee was handcuffed, informed of his rights, and transported to HCSD. Transportation proceeded without incident. At 10:52 PM, R/O turned the arrestee over to HCSD personnel for processing. At all times while in custody, arrestee appeared coherent. Although uncommunicative, arrestee was cooperative.


DEFENDANT’S VERSION/REMARKS
(What did the defendant say about the offense or his/her whereabouts at the time of offense?)


Arrestee asked why he was being arrested and then said, “Oh wow. I can’t believe this s**t.” Otherwise, arrestee remained silent during transportation to the station and during processing. Arrestee declined to answer any questions until an attorney was present. However, arrestee cooperated physically and did not resist in any way.


“The whole school is reading this?”

“My mother got a visit from Marjorie Schlatter’s mom. Marjorie opened her packet and voilà. Her mom ran right over to show us. Wasn’t that nice of her?”

“Jesus. Tim.”

“Yup. It’s Red’s copy — see down at the bottom where he had to sign for it? D. Ronald Martin. Ol’ Dudley. His lawyer must have got it for him. He could’ve covered up his name before he Xeroxed it. But he wanted everybody to know he put this out.”

“Payback,” I said. “For burning his car.”

“There you go.”

“Oh God. Tim. I’m sorry.” I shook the pages. “This is true?”

“Well, not exactly. There’s a little more to it than that.” His skin looked translucent in the dashboard light.

“But they found you guilty of this?”

“Nah, they dropped the charges. I was a juvy. Slap on the wrist. My folks never even found out.”

“How could they not find out?”

“I told you — I used you as my excuse. My one phone call was to tell ’em I was spending the night at your house. I was so lucky you didn’t call me that night. They let me out the next morning. Remember when I was supposed to be taking those advanced placement classes out at West Hinds? I never went. I used the money to pay a lawyer. He handled the whole thing. The folks never knew. Until today when Marjorie’s mother came over. Mom thinks that was the only copy and somehow it got in Marjorie’s packet by mistake. She doesn’t know about Red and his Xerox machine.”

“What did she say?”

“She doesn’t believe it. She says it’s a case of mistaken identity. Dad wants me out of the house.”

“Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry, Tim. This is too much.”

“Yeah it is. Finally, too much.” That grim smile returned. “I guess all’s fair in love and war, isn’t that what they say?”

I turned away. I didn’t want to know more. What could it mean? Sodomy? Indecent? Lewd? Gross? Unnatural? It sounded like that song on the sound track of
Hair.

This happened a couple months after we met. Imagine — Tim had gone through this whole indecent unnatural thing, busted for these crimes, and never breathed a word to me. His best friend. Imagine holding that inside, all this time.

This was where all the trouble began. The words on these pages were the awful thing he didn’t want me or anyone to know.

That feeling I had gotten from him a few minutes ago? — that was a definite feeling. Oh God. Did that make me one too? Because I’m his friend? Because I could sense that he — that he was asking —

My hand wandered to the back of my head. Each of my fingertips found its way to one of the spots where my hair would not grow.

These words were the reason Tim drove away from Arnita on Prom Night, instead of stopping to help her. The thing that was gnawing at him all along. And now everyone in the world would be reading them.

So why was Tim smiling?

He switched off the dome light. “Today was just a perfect day, don’t you think? It was so great just riding around, checking out the stupid monuments. Did you like it?”

“It was okay,” I said. He wanted us to be friends again, like before.

“The weather was so perfect too. There was no way you could have made it any better.”

What I did to Red was bad enough. Setting fire to his car was every bit as unnecessary as it was satisfying. But what Red turned around and did to Tim — for revenge — well, forgive me if I thought that was the lowest of all. It didn’t help that it was all my fault.

Red could get a new car. I could get new friends. But Tim was destroyed. He could never go back to Minor High. He’d have to go somewhere else to graduate. Who could walk down the halls of a school knowing everyone had read what was written on this paper?

Lewd. Unnatural. Open and gross. Fag queeny fairy faggot homo queer, lurking and jerking off and God knows what else (sodomy, second degree!) in a roadside rest stop. He was a dead man.

“Red went to a lot of trouble to do this,” I said. “Tell you what, Tim. Call it off. Give up. Let him win. If this is how he fights, it’s not worth it.”

He brushed the hair from his eyes. “Red is not going to win. I can’t let that happen.”

“He already won, okay? Read this. It’s over. Admit it. It was you against him, and he won.”

“What about you?” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not on my side anymore?”

“Not for this fight. I’m done with it. Aren’t you done yet?” I shook the stapled pages at him. “Doesn’t this feel like enough to you? What do you wanna do now, kill Red? You can’t do that. I’ll probably go to jail for burning his car, and you can’t even go back to school now. It’s gone too far, Timmy, you’ve got to stop.”

“Friday I can go back,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“But everybody will know!” We got out to unload my bike from the hatchback.

“That’s the thing. That’s why I don’t want to go tomorrow. I need some time to get used to the idea.” I smelled his cinnamon gum. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” I said. “You hate me?”

“Never. I never will, Skippy.” He shoved me away. “Go on. I’ll see you Friday.”

I didn’t go into the Jitney Jungle. I watched until the Starlite Blue Pinto was gone, then I pedaled slowly uphill.

Poor Tim. I had loved being his friend. I felt sorry I couldn’t be his friend anymore. I didn’t hate him for what he was, but I couldn’t be around him after this. Could I? I would never forget what had happened to me outside the emergency room the day Granny died. I had to make sure it didn’t develop into anything that might resemble a problem. I knew it was not contagious, at least not in the obvious way, but it was better not to take chances. I knew for sure I was not that way because I had made love with a real live beautiful girl. Maybe sometimes I wondered, or let us say I tried to imagine certain things. And it felt like the kind of dark alley you don’t wander down alone at night.

2
8

D
EBBIE FRILLINGER EYED
the empty space beside me at the table. “Hey Daniel, can I sit here?”

“Sure. How’s it going, Debbie?”

She slid her lunch tray alongside mine. “Okay. Where’s Tim?”

“He didn’t come to school today,” I said. “He hasn’t been here all week.” This was Thursday, and I hadn’t seen him since he dropped me at the Jitney Jungle Monday night.

“What’s wrong, is he sick?”

“Didn’t you get those extra pages in your packet?”

“Extra . . . you mean that stuff about when he got arrested? Yeah, I read that. That was awful. That’s not why he didn’t come to school?”

“I think so. Listen, Debbie, I want you to know, I had no idea —”

“What a horrible thing for Red to do,” she said. “What a creep! Everybody hates him now. It’s one thing to pick on somebody, but to take something so personal like that and spread it around? That’s just cruel. And he went to so much trouble to do it! Disgusting.”

She surprised me. I’d assumed everyone would be grateful to Red for exposing the terrible queer in our midst. “You think so?”

“Timmy shouldn’t have messed with his car,” Debbie said. “Red loved that car.”

“Yeah, that was dumb,” I agreed.

“But Red drove him to it. He picked on him so bad. When is he coming back?”

“Who, Tim? I don’t think he’ll be coming back to school,” I said. “Not here, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Well — what do you think? He’s embarrassed that everybody found out.”

“What, that he’s a homo? Oh come on, Daniel, don’t be ridiculous. Everybody knew that.”

My mouth fell open. “They did?”

“Of course! For years.”

“Well, not me!”

“Please.
Tim?
He’s your best friend — and you had no idea?”

“Nope. I swear.”

Debbie sat back. When she spoke, it was softly: “Does that mean you’re not?”

“No! Of course not! Why, did you — what did you think?”

“Well, Dianne always swore you weren’t. She said you can’t be that good a kisser and still be . . .” She grinned. “But Tim was a great kisser too, so that doesn’t prove anything.”

“My God.” A flush of heat rose up my neck. “Why did you ever think that?”

“Well Daniel, I mean, come on. You and Tim are inseparable.”

“I never knew about him. Swear to God.”

She pursed her lips. “I can’t believe you’re that innocent.”

I
RODE OVER
to the Spur station to call Tim. For the third night in a row Patsy Cousins said he wasn’t home. “I don’t know, Daniel, he says he’s out practicing his routine.”

“What routine?”

“Some new show he’s in. I’ve learned not to push him too hard for details. He tells me what he wants me to know. It seems to work better that way. You know how worried we were.”

“Okay, thanks. I guess I’ll see him in school tomorrow.”

“Wait. Daniel. He doesn’t seem quite so down now, does he? I mean, to his father and I, it seems like a big difference just in the last week or two.”

Tread with care. She didn’t realize that the whole world had already learned about Tim. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “We went to Vicksburg the other day. He did seem a little happier.”

“We think so, too. He’s not brooding around the house so much. I’m sure we were making a fuss about absolutely nothing. Thanks for sticking by him, Daniel. You’re a good friend.”

I said goodbye and went back across the highway. Janie was excited about our first shipment of movies. Friday night was to be the grand opening of the Musgrove-owned-and-operated Twi-Lite Drive-In. I’d begged Dad to let me and Janie help him pick the movies — his idea of a classic was
The Green Berets
— but while I wasn’t looking, he’d phoned up a movie distributor. Here came a huge box of red plastic marquee letters, still affixed to their snap-off frames, and a stack of battered green film cans.

I didn’t recognize the titles but they were definitely drive-in movies:
Enter the Dragon, Invasion of the Bee Girls, Hitler: The Last Ten Days, Scream, Blacula, Scream!, House of Psychotic Women, Last Tango in Paris, The Young Nurses.

I examined the rims of the cans. “Any of these any good?”

“Beats the heck out of me,” Dad said. “I don’t know why they couldn’t send one or two a person’s ever heard of. The man said he was sending the drive-in rotation for the fall. What is this
Tango in Paris
? Who wants to see some movie about French people dancing?”

I consulted the sheet. “It says Marlon Brando. It might be good.”

“How about the Hitler one for the grand opening?” Dad said. “People love stuff about Hitler.”

Janie and I groaned.

Dad said, “All right then, the tango one. I really don’t care.”

I said
House of Psychotic Women
would draw a bigger crowd. Dad said he had lived it, he didn’t want to watch a movie about it. Janie said she would rather see
Invasion of the Bee Girls.

“I’m partial to
The Trouble With Angels,
myself,” said Dad. The first four reels of that old Hayley Mills movie were the only celluloid Tex Mooney had left behind in the projection booth. Dad had been watching those reels a lot, late at night, after we were asleep. I would sometimes awaken to see Hayley’s eye blown up giant-sized on the wall of my room. “I told the distributor I’d give him top dollar for the last two reels. I would sure love to know how it ends.”

“Hayley Mills decides to become a nun,” I said. “We saw it when we were little.”

Dad’s face darkened. “Why did you tell me? Don’t you think I wanted to find that out for myself?” His irritation dissolved. “Wait a minute. Hayley Mills does?”

“It’s kind of a twist at the end.”

“That ain’t even believable,” he said. “Dang, I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

Jacko said he sho would like to see a picture with Tom Mix in it. Dad said Tom Mix was a silent movie star and had been dead a long time. Jacko said all the best picture shows had Tom Mix.

I went to help him into bed. Since he got home from the hospital, the old man spent most of his time in his room on the ground floor.

Tomorrow was Friday. I doubted Tim would show up at school. What could he gain by coming? He could only lose, in ways I didn’t want to imagine. He needed a fresh start — a county school, maybe, or one of the Council schools. If you’re a pariah, you do what you have to. One year as the new guy somewhere, he could go off to college and everything could work its way back toward normal.

I was beginning to get used to the idea of finding my own way without him.

Just got my eyes closed and drifting to sleep when here it came again, the square of light on the wall, the opening credits, the trouble, the angels. Dad was playing the first reel again.

Gonna have the light shining in our eyes, all night long.

Friday when I woke up I didn’t want to go to school. Wouldn’t it be better just to go on and transfer to the county school with Tim, get a new start for myself while I’m at it?

Forget it. Stick to your plan. Life as a solo.

I had to stop being Tim’s sidekick. I had to be nobody’s sidekick. I had begun to understand the urge that made Bud hide himself in his room at the start of his senior year, with no friends and no desire to make any. He was planning a clean getaway. That might be a good strategy for me: Spend this year in my room, watching Hayley Mills’s eye and plotting my escape from this place. Counting off the days until I could leave. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .

I left Janie waiting for the school bus; she had talked our old friend the Hooterville driver into changing his route, just to pick her up. On my Raleigh (I considered it mine now) I had given up Highway 80 for my fine secret cross-country path. In reality it was a maintenance road for a gas pipeline, but I pretended it was a secret roadway built just for me: a cinder-covered path shooting a straight line from a point just east of the drive-in, over the hills to the practice field behind Minor High. Riding it made me think of the days when I rode my Schwinn in from the country to do Mrs. Beecham’s chores and be near Arnita.

A fine, coolish morning with a sparkle of dew on the grass, the first hint that summer might not last forever. I loved flying down the inclines and standing up on the pedals to march over the hills. I was thinking Mom should come on back to see how we’d fixed up the Twi-Lite. Dad was even acting a little nicer these days. He’d hardly raised his voice since Mom left.

On the phone Mom said she missed us, but she didn’t sound too torn up about it. In her absence Dad and Janie and I were on our best behavior, taking turns looking after Jacko, pretending to get along. We thought it would just have to last until Mom came back. I couldn’t imagine the three of us facing the idea of life with . . . just us.

I came over the last rise breathing hard, into view of the sprinklers sending great water-arcs across the practice field. The junior varsity squad was doing jumping jacks just out of reach of the spray. I heard the shrill of the three-minute bell. I rode around Titan Field, up the service road, along the band hall, to the front of the school.

I locked my bike and made a dash for it, across the courtyard and down the hall. Slid into Mrs. Deavers’s homeroom an instant before the last bell.

After homeroom I decided to stop by the library, one of my favorite places to while away study hall. The librarian was Mrs. Sidney, thin and delicate as a china teacup, with a refined Delta accent that spoke of magnolias and plantations. Though she was barely forty, she dressed like an old lady — shapeless colorless dresses, spinster glasses, her hair in a bun.

I asked if she knew of any books about Mississippi architects. She said she doubted there was such a book. I asked if she happened to know, then, how to find out who designed Minor High School, and the Twi-Lite Drive-In, and the Mississippi Coliseum. Was it possible the same person could have designed all three?

She steered me to a shelf with a few architecture books, and said she would help me make an interlibrary request to track down the information. “This is for a class project?”

“No ma’am. I’m just curious.”

“Hm.” A prim smile. “We don’t get much of that around here.”

I wedged myself on a rolling stool with a stack of large flat books. For the next forty minutes I submerged myself in a sea of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, so many long fantastic buildings I forgot why I’d come in here. The bell rang. I closed up the books and began wedging them into the shelves.

I was thinking if I told Tim about my talk with Debbie Frillinger — if he knew that even a Jesusy girl like Debbie didn’t hate him for what was on those Xeroxed pages — maybe there was a chance he could come back to school after all. Let a little time go by, let things settle down, and then it might possibly work.

I heard a car backfire. A percussive explosion loud enough to make me jump.

But the sound couldn’t be a car, it came from inside the school.

A firecracker. Somebody had set off a firecracker in the hall!

Something in the sound was not a firecracker — a ripping sound, the air being torn in two, lightning striking too close.

Mrs. Sidney put her head out the door, into the hall. Whatever she saw out there brought her scrambling back inside. “Great heavenly days,” she cried. “They’re shooting a gun!”

The second blast seemed twice as loud. The echoing roar pierced by a girl’s scream. Not a Halloween scream. Real fear.

I knew better than to stick my head out that door. Without moving I found that I had entered a different place.

Somebody ran by the doorway, then somebody else. Then a lot of people running. Coach Barnes yelling, “He’s got two guns, now get out of here! Go!”

See, I knew. When the coach said that, I knew. My ears had told me that was gunfire, but I could not face the full meaning of who it was until he said that. And then I knew everything.

There was nobody else it could be.

“Oh, Lord,” Mrs. Sidney cried, “please don’t hurt anybody.”

I got calm. Way too calm. My heart stopped beating. All the liquid inside me froze, cracked, burst the vessels, and sent the blood washing back through me with such force that I had to lean against the wall. Mrs. Sidney gripped my arm. “Honey, are you all right?”

I tried to push past her. “I need to go.”

“Where?”

“I know who it is. I need to go see.”

She clung to my arm with thin fingers. “Who? Who is it?”

“Let me go. I’ve got to stop him.”

“Oh, no. You’ll get hurt! Stay in here with me!”

Like an answer, a burst of gunfire down the hall. This was a different gun — a sharp whip-crack sound, four rapid shots
— blam blam blam blam!

That brought a big scream, many girls screaming at once, as on the Zipper at the carnival.

Through the library’s glass wall I saw windows popping open along the row of classrooms in the courtyard. Kids tumbled out and ran for their lives. I heard a thunder of running in the hallway, people shouting and running.

Oh, don’t do this. Stop now before you hurt somebody. This is bad enough don’t make it worse. That’s what I would tell him. But first I had to find him and hope he didn’t shoot me before I could speak.

“Miz Sidney.” I pried her fingernails from my flesh. “Let me go.”

“Young man, you are not going out there!”

I loved her for that — she didn’t even know my name and she wanted to save me! Or did she want me to save her? “Get out of the school, go out the back way!” I said, and pushed her away.

I have never been brave. I did not want to start now. The brave people in movies are always the first to die. But I was the only one who knew him. I knew very well that what he started, he would be determined to finish. If anyone in this building could convince him to stop, it was me.

I stepped into the hall and started walking toward the sound, upstream through a panicky rush to the back of the school.

Probably he was too far gone to listen. He might even kill me. But nobody else stood a chance.

The first shot had gotten my attention. The second shot had made it more than an accident.