Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (5 page)

“Think about it. What was the difference between you hittin’ the side of the truck or being in front of the truck? Maybe a second? A second and a half?”

I replayed the events in my mind. “Yeah, about that.”

“Runnin’ over me probably slowed you down just enough to make the difference between concussion and coffin.”

I didn’t say anything. Dust sifted through the beam of the flashlight in front of M’s face.

“Do you believe in God?” M asked.

“Of course,” I answered automatically.

“All the time?”

“Of course.” I looked at M a little closer. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah.” M looked away and shone the flashlight to the floor, away from his face. The shadows turned upside down. “But not all the time.”

“Why not?”

M turned off the flashlight. The alcove plunged into darkness. We sat in silence. Eventually my eyes adjusted to the thin illumination that penetrated the grimy dormer window from the streetlight. M’s face was a black moon in a blacker night, eyes lost in shadow.

“Sometimes, there is no God.”

I squinted in the dark, trying to see his eyes. He turned his head away from me and his eyes came out of shadow, shining. He looked out of the window into the night. I said nothing.

“Sometimes you pray for somethin’, somethin’ good, but it never happens. Sometimes you pray for somethin’ bad to quit, but it don’t.”

I said nothing. I rarely bothered God with my problems. Of course I prayed before meals, at least when Mom and Dad were around. And at church. Just the regulation stuff. I had heard of desperate people pleading with God, but I had never done so, probably because I had never been desperate. What did I have to be desperate about? I was only ten years old, for crying out loud!

M kept his gaze riveted to the window. “But today I saved your life. That should count for somethin’.” He looked back at me, his eyes veiled in shadow again. “You owe me one. Or maybe God owes me one. Maybe there is some special thing for you to do, and I kept you alive so you can do it.”

This whole thing sounded too hypothetical for me. “Or maybe you just happened to be there. Does it have to be some big reason? Maybe it’s just for no reason. Maybe it just is.”

M sat still for a long time. “You said you believed in God. All the time.” With fierce deliberation he breathed, “There is a reason.” He switched the light back on and shined it directly in my face. I squinted at him and shielded my eyes with my hand. M turned and walked down the stairs, leaving me in the darkness.

A long time later, I followed.

CHAPTER FIVE
That Christmas something happened that changed my life. I got an AM radio. It was a battery-operated portable, not very big for a milestone, only about the size of a deck of cards. Still, it was an opaque window into another world that didn’t have much in common with mine.

Each night, when I was forced to quit reading, I would tune in to WLS AM 890 out of Chicago and put the radio under my pillow. I fell asleep to the world-according-to-pop music in all its eclectic glory—from quirky, weird songs like “Auntie Grezelda” to production masterpieces like “Good Vibrations.” I drove my parents crazy by making them turn up the radio whenever Tommy James and the Shondells came on singing “Hanky Panky.” Heidi, Hannah, and I sang along without a clue as to what the song was about.

Sometimes strange, disturbing images of another world trickled through in lyrics to songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or “White Rabbit” —images I didn’t understand, but were all the more fascinating to me because of their elusiveness.

One weekend we drove down to Kentucky to visit some friends. I was staring out the window as we passed through Cincinnati, looking at all the tall, narrow houses lined up like pastel dominoes waiting for a perverse giant to push the first one. In the downtown traffic we inched past a park. A group of teenagers were hanging around a fountain. They all had long hair, even the guys, and were dressed like they were headed to some kind of psychotic costume party: tie-dyed shirts, hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans, fringed leather vests, headbands, necklaces of various kinds.

“Oh, look,” Mom said, pointing out the window.

“Hippies,” Dad said, using the same tone of voice he would have used to identify a hippopotamus or giraffe in the zoo.

Hannah giggled. “Hippies!” she repeated.

I was intrigued. “What’s a hippie?”

“Young people who live in communes and grow their hair long and wear necklaces they call ‘love beads’ and take drugs and protest the war,” Mom explained. She didn’t mention the “free love” thing, which I didn’t realize until later, of course.

“That’s stupid,” Heidi said.

I looked back out the window. “Why are they called hippies?” I expected them to have very large hips.

“I don’t know,” Mom said.

Dad volunteered some etymology. “It comes from the word hip, which came from the word hep, which means fashionable or knowledgeable about the latest trends.”

“Hippies,” I whispered to the window as the park faded from view, certain that these hippies were pieces in the puzzle forming from my AM-radio-sponsored lessons in pop culture.

The reference to drugs fascinated me even more. I had heard of acid, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, of people hearing colors and seeing smells and smelling music. I was very curious about how the senses could trade places, and I wondered what red sounded like. Was it loud? Soothing? Alarming? Obnoxious? Hypnotic? Stories of bad trips and acid flashbacks added a darker, menacing tone to the magical stories. Why did these hippies risk such dangers for the experience? What was I missing that made the reward worth the risks?

From that day forward I listened hungrily to the evening news whenever I saw a protest march or a love-in, grasping for details that would enlighten me about this new world. My tastes in music shifted from pop hits to music with more edge to it. From the Supremes doing “Keep Me Hanging On” to the Vanilla Fudge version, from the Monkeeys to the Stones.

I also started wondering about the Creature again. I periodically peered through the fence, sometimes catching a glimpse of her brogans jutting out of the box. When it got colder, she disappeared like the robins. One January afternoon I ventured through the gap. The box had collapsed into a soggy ruin. I propped it up. The tattered blanket was still inside, now hardly more than a rag. Nothing else of the Creature remained.

The next Saturday M and I walked to the library, bundled in hats, mufflers, mittens, and overcoats. A low gray blanket shut out the sun. Melted snow left behind a mantle of gray slush that mirrored the sky. The world seemed a muted dreariness. We kicked at the slush with our boots as we trudged along. I told M that I thought the Creature had left.

“Don’t even mention her, man,” he said with feeling. “It’s bad luck to talk about witches.”

“She wasn’t a witch, just a lady hobo.”

“Oh, she wasn’t? Didn’t you hear her put a curse on me? She tried to turn me into a pig!”

I stopped and looked at M. “What?”

M stopped and turned back. “Yeah, man. She said, ‘You will be cursed and become a ham,’ or somethin’ like that!” He shivered, but not from the cold. “And,” he added resentfully, his eyes narrowing into slits, “she said somethin’ about me being a slave. I missed some of it when I cleared that fence.”

I laughed, puffs of breath floating around my head. M was not amused. He walked on.

I ran to catch up, almost slipping in the slush. “M, she wasn’t putting a curse on you; she was quoting the Bible.” (Sometimes it comes in handy to be a PK. Not very often though.) “Ham was Noah’s third son. After the flood and the ark and two of every animal and the seven of some kinds of animal that nobody ever mentions and the rainbow and all that, Noah got drunk and was lying naked in his tent, and Ham made fun of him, but the other two sons walked into the tent backwards and dropped a robe on him or something, so Noah said that stuff about Ham. Cursed him.”

“What?” M stopped, again. “Where did you hear that, man?”

I walked back to him. “It’s in the Bible.”

“Really? There’s stuff like that in the Bible?”

“Oh, yeah. All kinds of stuff like that. Even weirder.”

“Really?”

“Really. That’s not the half of it.”

He considered for awhile, shrugged his shoulders, and we resumed our walk to the library.

“I still think she’s a witch,” he said.

I pushed him and he slipped on the ice, dragging me down with him. We wrestled in the slush and arrived at the library a little soggier for the trip. I got three Hardy Boys mysteries and
Kidnapped
. M picked up
More Homer Price
and
Sounder
.

On the way back, M introduced a topic that had never come up between us.

“I bet I know who you like.” M kicked a can exposed by the melting snow.

I immediately kicked the can back and said, “Who?”

“Pam.” He kicked the can back to me.

I faltered and missed the can completely. Every boy had some girl he liked, but it was usually a secret he guarded more jealously than his middle name, assuming, of course, he had an embarrassing middle name, like Maurice. (Apologies to any guys out there named Maurice, but at least your middle name isn’t Shirley, like one guy I knew! No apologies to any guys named Shirley.)

I liked M, but he was treading a little too close for my comfort. I hesitated to divulge the truth, but to deny it seemed to betray the girl of my secret affection, and my sense of honor shrank from that dastardly deed. I self-consciously admitted to M that I was entranced by the plain but intelligent Pam.

“And Bingo was his name-o!” M cried just before slipping to the ground in a wail of laughter while attempting a pirouette in the slush.

Of course I wasn’t giving this information away for free. After he got back up and picked up all his books, I kicked the can back at him and demanded a corresponding disclosure.

“Guess,” he said, with a kick.

I mentally ran through the Negro girls in the class and picked a likely name.

“Nope.” Kick.

I picked another.

“Nope.” Kick.

I named them all.

“Nope.” Kick.

I gave up in exasperation. I figured it must be someone in another grade, and I didn’t know many kids in other classes. “So, who is it?” I demanded.

“Terri,” he said with a grin.

I was stunned. “Terri?”

“Yeah, Terri.”

“Oh.” There was no denying Terri was cute, but she was also white. The fact was so glaringly obvious I wondered why M hadn’t noticed. I walked in silence for awhile, kicking the can when it came into my lane. Because he was my friend, I felt I should say something. But also, because he was my friend, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I didn’t know how to do both.

“Well . . . I don’t . . . I mean, it’s not . . . well, I’m not sure that would work out,” I said lamely.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Well, because . . . you know.” I kept my eyes safely on the can.

There was silence for a moment. “Oh, you mean because—”

“Yeah,” I said in a rush, feeling vaguely ashamed without knowing why. We walked on in silence for a long time, the can abandoned behind us in the slush.

We finally arrived on our block. Our library visits had developed into a tradition. The ritual was usually concluded with us repairing to an attic, his or mine as the whim took us, to read for awhile, often with refreshment smuggled up the stairs. This time we stopped on the corner, awkwardly not turning toward either house.

The impasse was broken by M. “You know, Moses’ wife was black.”

“What?”

“Looks like there’s some parts of the Bible you don’t know that much about, man.”

That decided our destination. A few minutes later we were in Dad’s study, still in our coats, steaming slightly on a heater grill, waiting to be noticed. He ceased his labors and peered over large black-frame glasses. “Yes?”

M looked at me. I cleared my throat. “We have a question.”

“Yes?”

“About the Bible.”

Dad raised one eyebrow, wrinkling the forehead that extended into his scalp. “So, thou hast come to the Oracle. Speak and I shall attend thee.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his hands over his stomach. This little speech didn’t phase me. Dad always talked like that. If it had any affect on M, he didn’t show it.

I hesitated, a little shy about introducing the topic. I decided there was nothing for it but to plunge forward. “M says that Moses married a Negro woman.” I couldn’t bring myself to say black even though M had just used it a few minutes ago. It seemed indelicate. My family always used the term Negro. M and I never discussed race, beyond his attempts to educate me about the people he was named after.

Dad nodded his head slowly and looked from me to M and back. “That is certainly one interpretation of Numbers 12.”

I raised an eyebrow of my own and stole a glance at M, who was nodding solemnly, vindicated before the authority.

Dad flipped through the Bible on his desk. “The King James Version says, ‘And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.’” He looked up at me. “Do you remember the Ethiopian missionary who visited our church last year?”

I nodded. The man spoke very strangely, like he hadn’t quite mastered the use of his tongue, or like it was slightly too thick for its purpose. He was also the blackest person I had ever seen, much darker than even M, who rarely took second place in the battle of blackness.

“However,” Dad continued, “the Revised Standard Version reads a little differently.” He pulled another Bible off the shelf behind him. “‘Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.’” He looked up. “Which would mean she was a native of Arabia Chusea, where Saudi Arabia is today. Which would make her race much closer to the Hebrews.”

“Does that answer your question?” Dad closed the Bible and returned it to the shelf.

“Yes. Thanks,” I said, and we left, climbing to the heights of the attic. M didn’t say anything until we were at the top.

“See? What did I tell you?” There was a touch of gloating in his voice.

“Yeah, yeah, so you were right.” I sat down and pulled out my book, but didn’t open it. I looked out the window for awhile before I spoke again. “I guess the question is, which version does Terri have, King James or Revised Standard?”

M didn’t say anything for awhile. He opened a book and held it in his lap, his black thumbs pressed against the white pages. Then, without looking up from the book he was pretending to read, he said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”