Paris Trout (2 page)

"
We was huntin' .22 bullets," she said.

Before the lady could return to the shelves, Mr.
Trout appeared from the back of the store. just like before, he was
suddenly there. He stood behind the lady, staring at the girl.

"
What is it now?" he said.

The girl looked at the floor, and when she tried to
speak, everything was real again. The fox and the bullets and her
mother.

"She wants some bullets, Paris," the lady
said.

"More bullets?" he said, to her, not the
lady. Rosie nodded, without looking up.

"You have another dollar?"

She reached into the pocket of her shorts and came
out with the three dimes he had given her in change when she paid
before.

"That ain't enough for a box of shells," he
said.

She stood still.

"It ain't enough money," he said, louder,
as if she couldn't hear.

She felt herself turn weak inside and knew the fox
had poisoned her.

"What happened to them shells you got before?"
he asked.

She shook her head. "The fox got them," she
said. Without knowting why, she reached down and touched the torn
places in her skin.

The lady saw the bites from behind the counter and
came around for a closer look. Mr. Trout didn't move. The lady said,
"She's been bitten."

"
A fox?" he said. "You sure it was a
fox?"

"She's been bitten for certain," the lady
said.

"
It might be a dog," Mr. Trout said. "You
know the difference tween a fox and a dog, miss?"

It took the girl a moment to realize he was talking
to her. "Yessir," said. "I know dogs."

"You need to go home, tell your mammy what
happened," he said.

The lady spoke up again. "She needs to see a
doctor," she said.

"Her people got doctors," he said.

The lady put her hands on the girl's shoulders and
looked into her eyes. The girl could smell the lady's soap and the
shampoo she used to wash her hair. It was sweet, but not as sweet as
the toilet water her mother used. "Does your momma take you to
the doctor when you're sick?" she said.

"
My momma don't know when I'm sick."

And the lady turned and looked at Mr. Trout, her
hands still on the girl's shoulders. "I'm going to take her to a
doctor," she said.

"
In hell," he said.

"She's bitten."

"
Probably a damn dog," he said.

"
I won't listen to that language in front of a
child," the lady said.

"
You listen to any goddamn thing I say."

The lady received that as if he'd boxed her ears. She
took Rosie by the hand and led her out of the store. Mr. Trout stood
where he was and watched them leave. Rosie heard the bell ring as the
door closed.

They walked across the street and then to the end of
the block. The lady still held on to her hand, but she walked ahead,
pulling her now as they turned the corner toward Thomas Cornell
Clinic.

The clinic sat across the street from the campus of
Georgia Officer Academy, and the girl saw soldier boys in their
uniforms over there, some of them younger than herself hurrying in
cross directions into the gray buildings. It seemed to her that
soldier boys were always hurrying — that the same time that
belonged to white people crawled all over them.

She thought she would rather not know anything about
time than to have it crawling all over her.

They crossed another street, and the girl noticed the
faces in the windows of cars. She guessed it was not every day that a
white lady walked up the street toting somebody°s colored girl that
wasn't her own.

The lady suddenly turned left, pulling her along.
They climbed four steps and then walked through a glass door. A nurse
was sitting at a desk at the far end of the room, and the lady left
Rosie just inside the door while she told the nurse what happened.
The nurse listened and wrote things on a paper.

Every few seconds she looked around the lady to see
Rosie for herself. She did it so often that the thought came to the
child that the nurse was drawing her picture.

When they had finished talking and writing, the nurse
stood up and came across the room after her. The girl backed away.
"It's all right," the lady said. "Dr. Braver just
wants to take a look."

And the girl looked at the lady and believed her and
allowed herself to be taken down a hallway and then into a small room
in the back.

"
Doctor be with you directly," the nurse
said. She put the papers she had been writing on a glass cabinet, and
then she frowned, and then she shut the door.

The room was white and bare. There was a narrow bed
against one wall, a wood chair against the other. Between them were
the cabinet and a sink. The girl could see inside, cotton and little
jars of pills. She could not read what was written about her on the
paper.

She sat down in the chair and waited. There was a
picture on the wall, a white boy and his granddaddy fishing in a
river. She studied the picture a minute and saw neither one of them
knew how to fish.

She was still thinking about fishing when the door
opened and the doctor came in, frowning the same way as the nurse,
white hair and white shoes, wearing some loose doctor's instrument
around his neck like he didn't even know it was there.

 
He did not speak to her at first. He went to
the cabinet and looked at the paper the nurse left. He was still
looking at it when he spoke.

"
You been bit?"

She did not know if he was talking to her or the
paper.

He turned around and stared into her face. "You
hear what I asked you?"

"
Yessir," she said.

"Well? Did you get bit or was it a story?"

"
No sir, I don't tell no stories."

"
So you been bit."

She pointed to the place on her leg. He looked at it,
without trying to get closer. "How long since you had a bath?"
he said a minute later.

"Saturday," she said.

He frowned; he looked as unhappy as she was. "You
got this dirty since Saturday?"

She looked down at her legs too. "I must of
did," she said.

Without another word he left the room, and in a
moment the nurse was back. She washed the spot where the fox had
bitten her with water and soap from the sink. She was rough and did
not touch the skin except with the rag. Rosie could see from her
expression that she did not enjoy to wash a colored girl's leg.

When she finished, there was a circle cleaned around
the bites, and streaks of dirty water ran down the girl's calf and
over her ankles. The nurse threw the washrag into a pail and then
scrubbed her hands. It took her longer to scrub her hands than it had
to clean the bites.

When the doctor came back into the room, he was
carrying a needle. The needle was long enough to go in one side of
her and out the other. "What that for?" she said.

The doctor looked tired. "Rabies shots," he
said. She shook her head no and edged farther back into the chair.
"If you got bit by a fox," he said, "you got to have
shots." He held the needle up for her to see.

"They go in your stomach."

"
I don't want nothin' like that inside my
stomach less I swallow it," she said.

"
Now, you're sure it wasn't some dog," he
said. "If it was a dog, the police just take you home, maybe ask
what it looked like. As simple as pie, if it was a dog." She saw
him looking at her; she couldn't see what he wanted.

"
The police doesn't know where I live," she
said.

"
They take you where I tell them," he said.

"
I never heard of that," she said.

"
It's for when you get bit," he said. "Once
somebody brought you here, the police got to take you home."

The girl sat still a moment, looking at the needle.
"I believe I take the ride home," she said.

The doctor laid the needle down on the glass counter.
"Then it wasn't no fox," he said. He looked at her as he
said that and shook his head no.

"No sir," she said.

"
A lot of them dogs," he said, "they
look like a fox, don't they?"

And then he was gone from the room again, and a
minute later the nurse led her out the back of the clinic and waited
there with her until a police came to pick her up.

He put her in the back seat and then got in himself
behind the wheel.

"
Where to, miss?" he said.

She did not answer at first.

He turned in his seat. "Where's your house at?"

"
The Bottoms," she said.

He put the car into gear and started out of the
alley. "I heard that's a nice neighborhood," he said. She
saw him smile.

He turned left at the end of the alley, and they
drove back through town. The girl pressed her face into the window,
and as they passed Main Street she saw the lady again, heading back
in the direction of the store. The lady had lost the purpose in her
walk, though, as if she hadn't made up her mind where to go.

THE POLICE FOLLOWED the road that followed the
railroad. The ride was smooth until they were out of town, and then
the car slowed and began to bounce. The window bumped against the
girl's forehead and her teeth until she moved away, leaving wet marks
on the glass.

The road passed through brush and then separated two
large pine trees. The back seat of the car was suddenly darker, and
she heard the branches scrape the sides. Then they were back in the
open, and she saw the railroad tracks again, and then the sawmill,
and beyond that Damp Bottom.

She was excited, as if she had been away a long time,
and she wondered what the neighbors would think to see her coming
home in a police car.

"The car stopped, and the police turned again in
his seat. "Home sweet home," he said.

"
Yessir," she said.

"This is it?"

She looked out the window. Half the Bottoms were
standing out on their porches, to see what the police was up to now.
It was an out-of-the-way thing, to see a single police car in the
Bottoms. When they came, they brought everybody but Baby Jesus.

The police got out, the car dipped and rose, and then
he opened her door.

"Which is your house?" he said.

She nodded to the tar-roof shack just ahead of the
car. Most of her brothers and sisters were outside; there was no sign
of her mother. No sign of the visitor. The police began to walk in
that direction, and suddenly she did not want him near the house. She
didn't know why.

He was smiling, enjoying something she did not
understand. He was a big man, not old at all, and where his neck came
out of his collar, it looked swollen up. He walked ahead of her all
the way to the porch steps.

"
I be home now," she said quietly.

He smiled and shook his head. "I got to deliver
you to your mammy," he said. "It's a city law."

Rosie felt it again, that the police should not be
near the house. She felt it and stopped. He walked ahead, forgetting
her, up two steps to the porch and through her brothers and sisters
to the door. When he was there, he turned to her and winked.

He knocked, and she saw the visitor in the side
window.

He was standing against the wall, a shadow in a
shadow, his chest rising and falling as if something had chased him a
long ways. The police knocked again, and the girl's mother answered
the door. At the same time the visitor climbed into the window frame,
squatting, and the girl saw he was holding a knife in his teeth.

It resembled a smile.

"
Miz Sayers," the police was saying, "I
am Officer Andrews, and I brung you something home."

The girl's mother looked around the police until she
saw her.

'
°What's she did?"

The police's head moved back until a roll of skin
formed over his collar. "Nothin'," he said. "But a
white lady fetched her to the clinic on account she said she been bit
by something."

The visitor's eyes were scared and crazy. He perched
on the ledge of the window without moving, not even a finger, but the
girl could see everything inside him was jumping one side to the
other.

"
I ain't got no money for foolishlessness,"
her mother said to the police. "That girl got no bi'nis in no
clinic."

The police said, "I don't know nothin, about
that. I just brung her home." He looked around the porch as he
said that, smiling, and then he looked into the house. The visitor
jumped from the ledge and hit the ground running. The knife was still
in his teeth.

A changing number of children had collected along the
side of the house to watch the police talk to Rosie Sayers's mother,
and when the visitor jumped, one of them shouted, and then all of
them shouted, and the police took two quick steps to the side of the
porch and saw the visitor for himself