What Difference Do It Make? (13 page)

I didn't think he even knew I was there, but all of a sudden Mr. Ballantine spoke up. “Well, Denver . . . glad to see you.”

His voice came out raspy, like his mouth was full a' sand or steel wool.

“How you doin, Mr. Ballantine?” I said.

“I'm not doin so good, Denver. Don't have much time left. Not much time at all.”

“You all prayed up?” I asked. I had taken Ballantine to church, and he'd liked it, but I didn't know if he'd ever done business with the Lord.

“Well, I'm not sure about that,” he said, turning a little in his bed and motioning me over. “But I did want you to know how much I appreciated you looking out for me, bringing me food at the mission, and all that. You were a real friend to me, Denver—about the only one I had.”

I walked over beside the bed and looked down at Mr. Ballantine and saw a broken-down man. I thought about his son, dumping him on the curb like a piece a' trash. I thought about how he had at one time been somebody's son, somebody's true love, somebody's husband. Now here he was, about to die, with nobody but a sorry fella like me to say good-bye to.

“Mr. Ballantine,” I said, “I didn't do nothin for you that somebody else hadn't done for me.”

“Well, that may be so, Denver, but you were about the only person who showed me love when I wasn't very lovable. I just wanted you to know that I didn't forget.”

Then Ballantine got a twinkle in his eye. “Denver, there's something else I need to tell you,” he said.

“Yessir?”

“You're
still
a nigger!”

We laughed together until Mr. Ballantine broke down coughin, then purty soon he quieted down and looked at me real serious. Finally, he closed his eyes and slipped away. I was honored to be there to see him on through to the other side.

JOSHUA

Dirty White Spot

Joshua Plumley doesn't want to write a book or become a famous painter. “If I wanted to do that,” he says. “I'd go to an art gallery or hunt down that John Grisham guy.”

So instead, Joshua wrote us a letter—a letter about the struggles of race.

“I can imagine telling my wife the choice I made to write y'all like this,” the letter said. “Silence and a stare would be her response, her way of telling me she loves me but figures I operate on half a brain sometimes.”

But Joshua was compelled to write, he says, having grown up a “dirty white spot” in Birmingham, Alabama.

“I spent all my time with black kids,” Joshua says. Growing up in the shadows of the civil rights movement, “I never knew that skin color meant God either liked you or didn't.”

As a matter of fact, Joshua remembers that the best time he ever had growing up was when he and his friend, Melvin, would collect pine cones, like soldiers stocking an ammo depot, and fire them, like grenades, at squirrels.

But the whites in Birmingham looked down their noses on such things. The general opinion seemed to be that if a boy was going to harass woodland creatures, that was fine and well. But he ought to do it with someone of his own race.

“The day a white woman asked me why I was wasting time with the black kids haunts me still,” Joshua says. And that was in the 1980s.

Years later, Joshua married an African-American woman. Then in 2002, he wore out the knees of his jeans in turbulent prayer with God over his mother's battle with cancer.

“Kill the cancer!” he would pray. “Don't take my mom away!”

His mom's name is Debbie.

“When God chose to heal my mom, I started believing in miracles,” Joshua says. “Maybe I would have seen more if I hadn't waited so late to start believing. It's a shame so many people die lonely and tied up with hate. I figure now, at twenty-nine years old, one of the biggest reasons people miss the face of Jesus is because of how they hate the color of someone else's skin.”

18

Ron

E
ighteen months after
Same Kind of Different as Me
came out, I took a copy of the Sunday
New York Times
to share with Mama and Daddy. Miraculously, our book had made the bestseller list.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Daddy said. “Why would anybody want to read a book about you and Denver? Y'all ain't nobody, and you sure ain't no John Grisham!”

I swallowed my irritation. “You're right, Dad. We are a couple of nobodies. But the good news is, we were loved by a real somebody named Deborah.”

Then it really hit me. Apart from Deborah's love and Christlike forgiveness—forgiveness I didn't deserve—Denver and I would have never had a story to tell. She threw my sin as far as the east is from the west and never mentioned it again. For twelve years, not a day passed that I didn't think about what I'd done. I don't know if she did or not, but never once did she even insinuate that she remembered.

I don't believe my dad ever did anything intentionally to hurt me the way I did to Debbie. And yet for sixty years, the equivalent of a life sentence, I had withheld love from him because of my unwillingness to forgive him. Sure, I had done nice things for him and Mama. On the surface, I had acted the part of a good son. But in so many small ways I had punished him, discriminated against him for his weakness. Deborah had quickly forgiven me much, yet I had held on to my resentment, unwilling to give it up. It was my turn to let go of my grudge and really forgive him, though he didn't deserve it, and not beat him over the head with it ever again.

That day, I invited my daddy to spend a couple of days at Rocky Top, just the two of us. He packed an overnight bag and grabbed the Stetson I had given him the Christmas we bought the ranch. We sat on the patio and watched wild things cross the river and the eagles roost in the big cottonwoods. When the stars came out, I built a fire, opened a bottle of cabernet, and lit two Davidoff cigars. We toasted and reminisced; he began crying; then I did too.

He told me about his grandfather, a drover born in 1860 who made the first of many trips up the cattle trails when he was just fourteen. Frank Hopson was a cowboy and horse trader who had lived in Hamilton and Hico, towns just thirty miles from where we were sitting. Frank was my great-grandfather, Mama Clara's daddy I'd never heard about. The three sisters and Dad had taken care of him for the last twenty years of his life until he died in 1937. I missed knowing him, but as a kid, I dreamed of being a cowboy just like him. That night, looking over the Brazos with my daddy, I met Frank Hopson for the first time.

“This is the best day of my life,” Earl said to me that night, his voice breaking with sobs. “I'm eighty-nine, and I never thought I'd ever get to have a drink with you!”

It felt good. It felt right.

Then, as the fire slowly simmered down to embers, my daddy began to recite poetry. First Longfellow, then Robert Frost's “The Road Less Traveled.” The moment surprised me. I had never thought of him as being interested in literature or culture of any kind. But his recitation was brilliant—perfect in pitch and rhythm. No wonder his old buddies had loved drinking with him; the old man was smart and funny.

I read him a poem I'd written about my granddaddy, my mother's father, Jack Brooks. I call it “Boots Too Big to Fill.” He cried, not knowing how much I had loved his father-in-law. He'd never really gotten to know him. (Granddaddy didn't drink either.)

“Write a poem about me,” Earl said that night.

And I will, though it hasn't come to me just yet. Over a bottle of wine and two cigars, I met my father on his terms. And for the first time in my life, I liked him.

We talked about Jesus. My brother had prayed with him fifteen years earlier to receive salvation. Daddy said he believed he still had it. I do too. We prayed again, thanking God that it was a gift not to be taken back.

After midnight, the fire went out. We sipped the dregs of our drinks, and I helped him to his room.

“This has been the best day of my life!” he declared again.

We finally agreed on something. It had been one of the best days of my life too.

That Christmas, I gave my daddy a gallon jug of Jack Daniels Black Label. He cried once more. “It's the nicest present anyone gave me!”

That was saying something since I'd remodeled his whole house, bought him all new furniture, and given him a Jeep Grand Cherokee just a few years ago! But he was so proud of that bottle of liquor. He called all his friends and neighbors to come see his “Black Jack” displayed on the coffee table like a Henry Moore sculpture. In his mind, it was way too valuable to drink. He never opened it but kept it on display. After all, it was his favorite gift ever. He had just turned ninety.

19

Denver

When I was just a little fella, folks said there was a man named Roosevelt who lived in a white house and that he was tryin to make things better for colored folks. But there was a whole lotta white folks, 'specially sheriffs, that liked things just the way they was. Lotta times this was mighty discouragin to the colored men, and they would just up and leave, abandonin their women and children. Some was bad men. But some was just ashamed they couldn't do no better. That ain't no excuse, but it's the God's honest truth.

I
thought Lupe Murchison's house was big, but I hadn't never seen nothin like that place where the president and his wife lives at. It was never in my mind or my personality that I would ever wind up at the White House. It was never even my desire. So when me and Mr. Ron rolled up to the gates in a dark blue limousine, it was like bein' in a movie.

Mr. Ron and I was invited to eat lunch with the Bush family right in the upstairs part of the White House. It was a part of a celebration of reading that the president's mama was in charge of. I guess she's purty big on readin. Well, we drove 'round a driveway in the shape of a circle and rolled up to some doors guarded by Marines. They were lookin mighty sharp in their uniforms, which was the same color as the car. We got out the limo, and I never did see one of them fellas so much as bat an eyelash. I was glad they's on my side.

Once we was inside, we went into this fancy room that Mr. Ron said was where the diplomats come to. It was a mighty nice place with lots a' big ol' paintins of old-timey men on the walls. With all them rugs and flowers and big ol' sparklin lamps, the place reminded me of that Worthington Hotel in Fort Worth where I went and accepted that award for all Miss Debbie's hard work. When I was sleepin on the heatin vent out behind the hotel, I never did 'xpect to go in that place either.

Now here I was at the president's house, and we was s'posed to meet up there with some other folks that wrote some a' Miz Bush's favorite books. Purty soon they started to come in. One of 'em was Marcus Luttrell.

Mr. Ron said this fella was a war hero in Afghanistan who had earned a Navy Cross. I was honored to be there with him. He came in as a guest with a lady that turned out to be married to the governor of Texas.

“I want you to sit by me at lunch, Denver,” she said.

A coupla other writers came in, too, and I got introduced to em. Jim Nance, a sports fella from TV, was one of 'em. He had written a book.

We got to go on a little tour of the place, even walked right by the president's office, and then we went to the private elevator that the president hisself uses to go upstairs to get some sleep or get hisself somethin to eat. Along the way, I seen some men in suits with wires stickin outta their ears. They was nice enough, but I could tell if I'd a' looked cross-eyed, they'd a' taken me down to the fancy carpet with no questions asked.

Ron went up first 'cause the elevator could only take a few people at a time. Then I rode up, and when the doors opened, there was these two white ladies just a-smilin at me.

“Denver Moore!” said a lady with silvery hair and a necklace around her neck. “I am so glad to finally meet you! Can I have a hug?”

I didn't know whether I was s'posed to do that since I had had a lot of trouble with white ladies in my life. But Mr. Ron leaned over and said, “It's okay. That's Barbara Bush, the president's mother.” So I walked over and gave Miz Bush a hug. She smelled like flowers.

There was another lady standin there, too, and I had seen her on TV enough times to know that she was Laura Bush, the president's wife.

Then one of 'em said to me—I can't remember which one—that she was proud I'd learned to read and write. That's somethin I been workin on the last coupla years. And I don't know that I'm proud, but I got to admit it makes gettin 'round town a whole lot easier.

Laura Bush said her husband, the president, was gon' come up and join us, but he was tied up with somethin right then, and did we want to go out on the balcony for a little snack?

While we was walkin out there, Mr. Ron told me we was in the “residence,” the part of the White House where all the presidents have lived. And when we got out on the balcony, there was one of 'em sittin right there! It was Miz Bush's husband, the
first
President Bush. He was mighty nice to me.

Out there on the balcony, it was a warm spring day, and we could see that great big flat pond and that famous statue that points up to the sky like a giant railroad spike. I sat down at a table, and some waiters in bow ties started comin 'round with trays full a' food I seen at some a' them fancy places Mr. Ron dragged me to. But I was too nervous to eat much 'cause I was afraid them teeth Mr. Ron had made for me might fall out. It had happened before, and I didn't want it to happen in front a' no president!

Well, we sat out there sippin our drinks until Miz Bush asked if we'd like her to show us around the place. I 'specially remember two places she took us. One was the president's private office. He had a TV in there, and I 'xpect he could sit down in there and watch some baseball if he wanted to. The most amazin thing about that office was the desk. Miz Bush told us it was the desk where President Lincoln hisself had signed the Emancipation Proclamation all them years ago. I thought that was really somethin—that I would be standin there, a black man, the great-grandson of slaves, now a guest a' honor in the White House, standin here lookin at the spot where a great man signed the paper that set my family free. It was somethin I never woulda dreamed of.