A Fine Dark Line

3

IT WAS SUNDAY, and the drive-in was closed. Back then Sunday was taken seriously by Christians, and no legitimate businesses were open. Some Christians argued Saturday was the true day of praise and rest for the Lord, but the law thought it was Sunday.

For years there was a thing in Texas called the blue law, which meant there were certain items you couldn’t buy on Sunday. Like alcoholic beverages. Or you could buy a hammer, but couldn’t buy nails, a drill, but no bits. Anything that might lead to the successful completion of work. If someone saw you working, they looked at you as if you had just set fire to the courthouse while it was stuffed with pink-cheeked Girl Scouts and all their cookies.

As I recall, certain bathroom items were even considered taboo to be sold.

So, back then Sunday was not a day the drive-in opened. My parents were not churchgoers, and to the best of my memory, religion was never seriously discussed, least not from a theological standpoint.

Still, no matter what the family’s beliefs, there was no question there was some sort of moral event at the heart of Callie’s mistake. Enough that I heard Mother call on God. Twice. I think she was threatening him.

Daddy, realizing I was puzzled about the matter of the knotted balloon, tried to explain it to me that afternoon.

We were out back, inside the drive-in, under the awning over the front of the concession stand, sitting in chairs, looking at the green fence in the distance, watching what was left of the rain.

Daddy, without looking at me, said, “Son. Do you know what happened with Callie?”

“You found something in her room that shouldn’t have been there.”

Daddy sat silent for a moment. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, because, somehow, I knew this wasn’t a face-to-face kind of conversation.

“In a way that’s correct,” Daddy said. “Son, do you know about the birds and the bees?”

Of course I did. Was he asking me the difference? Was this a bird and insect lesson? I said, “I think so.”

“Well, there’s a time for the birds and the bees. You should know what it’s all about.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, Callie found out too soon. Or maybe she knew, but she got involved too soon.”

“With the birds and the bees?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You’re mad about it?”

“Yes. I’m hurt. I’m a little scared.”

I did look at him now. I couldn’t help myself. Daddy, scared? My daddy seemed to me invincible. Kind of man that would go bear hunting with a switch and make the bear carry the switch home for him. And here he was upset over some birds and bugs and a knotted balloon.

“Why, Daddy?”

“Because Callie is my little girl and I want the best for her, and she’s too young to be involved with that kind of thing.”

“Was she throwing them in her room?”

“Do what?”

“Water balloons?”

Daddy looked at me for a long moment, blinked, said, “Oh . . . Oh, I see . . . Why yes, son. She was. I can’t tolerate that kind of thing . . . Tell you what. We’ll talk later.”

Daddy stood up and went inside.

I sat there for a while, then toddled inside, confused. Whatever our conversation had been about, I was certain of one thing: It wasn’t a matter Daddy really wanted to discuss anyway.

———

IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS there occurred what seemed to me a series of random events. Oh, I knew Callie was in trouble for the water balloon, but it astonished me that Mom and Daddy told her she wasn’t going anywhere for six months or longer, or “maybe forever,” as Daddy put it, unless it was with the family.

Callie was also weepy all the time, and that surprised me. She normally took her punishment quite stoically, though it seemed to me she always got off lighter on everything than I did. She usually had Daddy wrapped around her little finger, but this time that wasn’t the case. He was harder on her than Mom was, and Mom wasn’t easy. She gave Callie all manner of odd chores, and would break out crying sometimes when she saw her.

Callie’s boyfriend, Chester, who she had met the second day we arrived in Dewmont, and who was nineteen, stopped coming around soon after, due to Daddy and him having what Mom would refer to in later years as an altercation.

To be more precise, Daddy told him not to show his face there again. After a few days, however, Chester ignored him, coming up one Sunday afternoon wanting to talk to Daddy, as he said, “Like a man.”

He came up in his black hotrod Ford, flame licks painted on the sides, got out, his hair sculptured into what looked like a black, overturned gravy boat. He had on a pink and black shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and a pair of, you guessed it, blue suede shoes.

Chester got out of his car slowly, like a visiting dignitary from the planet Rockabilly.

Daddy had already received word of his arrival, as I had been out in the front yard with Nub, messing about, and as soon as Chester showed, I rushed into the house to tattle.

I followed Daddy outside. Chester cocked his leg forward, tried to look like Elvis. He said, “Sir, I want to set you straight on something about me and Callie.”

That was the wrong tone. Daddy’s answer was to spring on Chester. Daddy’s fist found Chester’s mouth, and after that blow there was a sound from Chester like someone torturing a cat. Then Daddy was straddling him, beating him like a circus monkey.

Well, actually, had Daddy been serious, Chester would have never gotten up. Daddy was slapping him repeatedly, saying, “Getting any smarter, grease stick, getting any smarter?”

Chester’s IQ didn’t seem to be rising, but his voice had certainly jumped some octaves. After about five minutes of slapping it reached the level of the tenors in the Vienna Boys Choir, only less melodious.

And so, with Daddy straddling Chester under the shadow of the drive-in wall, trying desperately to raise Chester’s IQ with repeated slapping, the morning passed. Or so it seemed. I do believe Daddy slapped Chester for about fifteen minutes.

Chester wailed for God to come down from the heavens and save him, and though God didn’t show, Mom and Callie did.

Fearing Daddy would really lose it, turn his hitting into something more serious, Mom and me and Callie pulled him off. Daddy called Chester a sonofabitch while Chester limped for his car, his face red from slapping, his greasy hair hanging in front of his face, his ducktail mashed flat against his neck, the ass of his jeans dripping grass. His blue suede shoes still looked pretty good though.

“I told you not to come back around here,” Daddy said. “Ever see you again I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll have to hire a goddamn winch truck to crank it down so you can shit.”

Nose bleeding all over creation, Chester got in his old Ford and gunned it out of there, the tires tossing gravel.

“What in the world has gotten into you?” Mom said to Daddy.

Daddy burned a glance at Callie, said, “It’s what’s gotten into Callie that matters.”

“Stanley,” Mom said.

Cops came around later. Daddy took them aside and talked to them. I heard one cop laugh. Another slapped Daddy on the back. And that was the end of it.

No one really liked Chester anyway, so it ended up he just had to take his beating and enjoy it like it had been a Christmas present he always wanted.

These were the kinds of things going on, and I didn’t have a clue what they were.

———

THAT NIGHT, before going to bed, I started a book called Treasure Island. I had read pirate books before, but never anything like this. I read half of it before I fell asleep, but next morning, having read about that treasure, I was reminded of finding that rusty old box out back of the drive-in, and after breakfast I went to the shed to open it.

I found a crowbar, and by standing on the box, planting the bar in the loop of the lock, I was able with much huffing and puffing, and with the assistance of Nub barking and leaping, to snap it.

Inside there was a leather bag. In the bag, wrapped in what felt like a piece of a raincoat, was a bundle of brown envelopes tied up with a faded blue ribbon.

This wasn’t what I had hoped for.

Disappointed, I replaced them in the box, took the box to my room, closed the door, sat on the bed with it.

I was a little nervous about that. One water balloon had really gotten Callie in trouble. I wondered what my fate might be.

I opened the box, removed the bundle from the bag, tugged the ribbon loose, took hold of the envelope on top. It was not sealed. I reached inside and pinched out what appeared to be a letter.

I read a bit of it and my heart sank. It was written by some girl and it was all moony-eyed stuff. I opened the other envelopes, skimmed the contents, put them all back in their place, closed up the box, pushed it under my bed.

———

ABOUT A WEEK LATER Daddy hired a big colored woman named Rosy Mae Bell. She was big and fat and very black, wore clothes that looked to be made from my mama’s curtains, colorful rags around her head that she tied up front in a little bow. She looked a little bit like Aunt Jemima on the front of the same-named syrup. Or as we called it: surp.

Her job was to clean and dust and cook. This came about because of the drive-in work. Mom felt if she was going to work all night at the drive-in concession, and mess with me and Callie during the day, she ought to have some help doing the cleaning and cooking.

At cleaning, Rosy Mae turned out to be so-so, but when it came to cooking she had the skills of an angel. God’s own table could not have been as blessed as ours. I could tell my mom was actually a little jealous of Rosy Mae, and when we sat down to an early supper—the drive-in opened at eight on summer nights, which meant we’d start real preparation about seven—she’d always find a small complaint to make about the biscuits or the gravy. But it was halfhearted, because Mom knew, just as we all knew, and as Rosy knew (though she always pretended to be in agreement with Mom), it didn’t get any better.

Me and Rosy took to one another like ducks to june bugs.

During the day when Rosy was supposed to be cleaning, she often spent time with me telling me stories or listening to me tell her things I’d never even mention to my parents. A lot of the time she sat on the living room couch and read romance magazines. She could get away with this when Mom was running errands and Daddy was out front mowing the grass or out back picking up cups and popcorn bags and the like that patrons had thrown out their windows.

Along with that trash, another item that began to appear with some regularity among the toss-aways were those strange clear balloons like the one that had been found in Callie’s room.

It was my job to sweep out the concession and the little porch veranda in front of it, and I would watch Daddy pick up the trash with a stick with a nail in its tip. He’d poke stuff and put it in a bag, but he always seemed to poke those balloons with a vengeance. It slowly began to dawn on me that those particular balloons had about them a mysterious, perhaps even sinister quality that I had not previously suspected.

Rosy Mae and I had a kind of deal. I’d keep watch for her when I was sweeping the veranda, or when I was inside the concession and could see Daddy out the windows. I also had such good ears Rosy Mae called me Nub’s big brother. If I heard Mom coming home or saw Daddy finishing up, I’d step inside and call her name in a tone that meant she should get up, stash her magazine, grab a duster, start moving about.

And she was quick at it. The magazine would disappear inside the big paisley-colored bag she brought every day, and she’d start flouncing about with that duster. And to see that big woman flounce was something. She looked like a bear dusting her den.

———

ONE MORNING, Rosy Mae’s day off, a Saturday, I was out on the veranda sitting by my daddy in one of the metal lawn chairs as he whittled on a stick and talked about the new Jimmy Stewart movie showing that night, Vertigo. He said that he wouldn’t really get to watch it because he had so much work to do, and he hated that because he loved Jimmy Stewart, and thought on Sunday he might just show it for the family and have friends over, but Callie couldn’t have any of hers. She could watch, but her fun was to be limited.

I listened to this, liking the idea, especially about Callie not having friends over. I was really enjoying her punishment. I was also envious that she made friends easily. In the short time we had been in Dewmont, she had made a lot of them. She was so pretty, so fun, all she had to do was show up and the boys were falling all over her, and the girls, though maybe jealous of her at first, soon warmed to her as well.

Well, most of them.

“Can I invite a friend?” I asked.

“Sure. Who?”

“Rosy Mae.”

Daddy turned to me, said, “Son, Rosy Mae’s colored.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He smiled at me. “Well, she’s all right. I like her. But white people don’t spend special time with coloreds. It’s just not done. I haven’t got a thing against her, you see. She’s all right in her place, but if I invited some of our friends over, I don’t think they’d want to sit with a colored and watch a movie.”

“Why not?”

“Well, coloreds are different, son. They aren’t like you and me. Good upstanding white people just don’t spend a lot of time around niggers.”

This was all something I should’ve known, I suppose, but in No Enterprise I had been sheltered. There, the only coloreds I had seen were those driving mule-drawn wagons with plows in the back.

And there was Uncle Tommy, who sharpened knives and fixed household goods. He lived down by the creek in a one-room shack with an outhouse out back. I knew the colored people I had seen were poor, but it wasn’t until that moment I understood they were different, considered inferior to whites. And though I had heard the word nigger before, I realized now that it could be said in such a way as to strike like a blow, even if spoken to a white person.

It also occurred to me that Daddy and Mom didn’t have any true friends in Dewmont, and they had most likely spent more hours with Rosy Mae than anyone they might invite.

Daddy, sensing I was disappointed, said, “If you want, you can invite a friend of yours. What about that Richard kid? He looks a bit like a hooligan to me, but I reckon he’s all right.”

“Yeah. Okay. Maybe.”

“You think he has lice?”

“He scratches a lot.”

“That hair looks buggy to me.”

Richard was all right. I liked him. But I realized right then that I felt a closer attachment to Rosy Mae, and I had known her even less time than Richard.

Me and Rosy Mae did spend special time together. I didn’t have to think about what I was going to say before I said it to her. I sure didn’t tell Richard that I liked to read poetry, and I had told Rosy Mae that. And though she didn’t know a poem from a cow turd, she understood I liked poetry and appreciated my interest in it, and even let me read one by Robert Frost to her twice. She had also seen all the Tarzan movies from the balcony of the Palace Theater, where the coloreds watched, and she had seen movies in the black theater over in the neighboring town of Talmont that I had never seen or even heard of. Black cowboys. Black gangsters. Black musicals. I had no idea those movies even existed. She called them “colored picture shows.”

Aware of my pondering, Daddy said, “I just want you to know I haven’t got a thing against Rosy Mae.”

I thought, other than her being a nigger. I went in the house, upstairs, lay on my bed and felt . . . odd. I don’t know any other way to describe it. The information I received that day had struck me like a bullet, and it felt like a ricochet, meant for Rosy, received by me.

———

I HAD LEFT the door open, and while I was lying on the bed, Nub wandered in, jumped up next to me. Shortly thereafter, Callie came to the door. After the balloon incident, Daddy and Mom had swapped rooms with her, moving her upstairs, next door to me.

Callie was barefoot, had her hair in a ponytail, was wearing pink pedal pushers and a white, oversized man’s shirt. Like most girls that age, she wore too much perfume. For that matter, three years later, I would wear too much cologne.

She leaned against the door frame, said, “Mom catches you with your shoes in the bed, and that dog, there’s going to be some trouble.”

“You ought to know about trouble,” I said. “And she doesn’t care about Nub. She lets Nub in their bed.”

“Maybe she does, but you don’t know a thing about me being in trouble, Stanley Mitchel, Jr. Not a thing. I didn’t do anything. Now I’m grounded at the best time of my life. I’m supposed to be having fun.”

“You aren’t supposed to have those balloons in your room.”

I rolled my head to look at Callie, saw that she had turned red.

“I’ll have you know that it isn’t what you think.”

I wasn’t sure what to think, but I didn’t give away my ignorance. I said, “Yeah, whatever you say.”

“Jane Jersey dropped that through my window . . . Well, at least I think she did. Someone mean that likes Chester and doesn’t want us to be together and wants to give me a bad reputation. Jane Jersey already has a bad reputation. Not to mention an ugly hairdo. You could hide a watermelon in that hair of hers. Actually, it looks like one of those wire fish traps.”

“Why would you like Chester? He’s creepy. He looks like a spaceman. I think I saw him in Invasion of the Saucer Men. He was the little monster on the left.”

“You’re just mean, Stanley.”

“And you’re telling me Jane Jersey came by and slipped that balloon in your window on a stick? I’m supposed to buy that?”

“Most of the girls I get along with, but a few are jealous. Jane is the most jealous. She used to go with Chester. I didn’t break them up, though. They were already broke up. I met him at the Dairy Queen and we hit it off. It’s nothing serious. He’s just kind of fun. Different. Jane’s been ugly to me because of it. Always frowning, telling me to leave her boyfriend alone. Her putting that rubber—”

“Rubber?”

“That’s what the balloon is called, Stanley. It’s not called a balloon. Politely, it’s called a prophylactic. But her putting that in my room, or having one of her friends do it, that’s just mean. I don’t really know she meant Mom or Daddy to find it, but I think she wanted to show me she was getting what she thought I was getting. But I’m not. And if I was, I’d be smart enough to pick it up and get rid of it. And if Chester is getting what she says he’s getting, I don’t want any part of him.”

I finally gave in. “And what is she getting that you’re not?”

“Do what?”

“Jane Jersey. You said she wanted to show you she was getting what she thinks you’re getting. What were you and her getting?”

Callie closed the door. “You really don’t know about this, do you, Stanley?”

“I got some idea.”

“No you don’t. You keep calling it a balloon.”

“Well it is a balloon. Kinda.”

Callie laughed. “You don’t have a clue.”

“Well, I know Daddy’s real mad. I know that much.”

Callie sat down on the end of the bed. “Daddy’s wrong. I think he knows he’s wrong. He’s just waiting to be sure.”

“Waiting for what?”

“To see if I come up pregnant. To see if there was a leak.”

“Pregnant? A leak in what?”

I know it’s amazing, but I actually had no idea how pregnancy occurred. It just wasn’t talked about then by parents or in polite society.

Callie, however, was versed in all this, and was not as skittish about it as Mom and Daddy. She said, “You want to know how a girl gets pregnant?”

“I guess.”

“Well first, let me straighten you out on something. I’m not getting anything from anybody . . . Remember that part. You know those dogs out in the yard? The ones Daddy turned the hose on?”

“The ones with their butts hung?”

“Their butts weren’t hung,” Callie said. “The boy dog had turned, and that put them rear end to rear end, but it was his thing that was hung.”

“His thing?”

“That’s right. His doodle.”

“In her butt?”

“In her pee-pee.”

I was growing very uncomfortable.

“Let me explain it to you,” Callie said.

When she finished, I was amazed. “People do that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels good. Or so I’m told.”

“Does it feel good with one of those balloons on? Is that what makes it feel good?”

“I wouldn’t know if it felt good with one or without one.”

“Ooooh, you and greasy Chester?”

“I didn’t do anything. Let me tell you something, Stanley. I don’t really like Chester that much. I mean, I like him, but not that way. He’s a little on the stupid side. I like riding around in his car, but to tell the truth, I like Drew Cleves.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s quite the big dog at the high school. He’s a year ahead of me. He’s handsome. On the football team. Very popular. Of course, I hate football. Even if I want to be a cheerleader.”

“You haven’t even started to school and you know all that?”

“Yes. Unlike you, I’m not obnoxious. People like me. Well, most of them. I guess I’d have to mark Jane Jersey off the list.”

Since Callie was so forthcoming with information, I thought I’d slip in a question that had been bothering me.

“Callie?”

“Yeah.”

“Daddy says Rosy Mae is a nigger. Is she?”

“That’s a terrible word,” Callie said. “Mom says never to use it. Daddy shouldn’t say it. Rosy Mae is a Negro. Or colored.”

“He says we shouldn’t be around Rosy Mae unless she’s working here.”

“It shouldn’t be that way, Stanley, but I guess it is. I haven’t a thing against coloreds, but I doubt I’d be very popular hanging around Negroes.”

“Is that why they don’t go to our school? Because they’re niggers?”

“Stanley, I’m going to spank you myself if you say that terrible word again. Coloreds do not like being called niggers. I may not be brave enough to spend time with Negroes, but I know it’s wrong, and I know calling them nigger is wrong. And you should too. The world just hasn’t caught up with the way we ought to be treating people, Stanley . . . What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That rusty old box poking out from under your bed.”

“I found it.”

Callie pulled the box out. “What’s in it?”

“Just some letters.”

“Where did you find it?”

Callie opened the box.

“It was buried in the backyard. Me and Nub found it.”

“Buried? Wow.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched Callie take out the bag, remove the letters, and untie the ribbon.

“Those are mine,” I said.

“They belong to whoever wrote them. You just found them, you little goober.”

“They’re just love letters.”

Callie read the first letter. When she finished, there were tears in her eyes. “That is so sweet.”

“I thought it was mushy.”

“It’s very sweet. And so old-fashioned. Did you see the date?”

I shook my head.

“It was written during the war. First year of it.”

“That’s a long time ago.”

“I was born during the war. Nineteen forty-two. So it’s not so long ago. It reads like a woman writing to her lover.”

“You saying a guy kept those letters?”

“Well, it reads that way. I suppose they could be letters from a guy to a girl. Initials are used. M to J, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe if I read more.”

“How did it end up buried out there?”

“I don’t know.”

Callie pulled out another envelope, removed a letter. “It’s signed M as well. I guess it was a pet thing with them. Just using the initials. Did you notice there are no stamps or addresses on the envelopes?”

“What does that mean?”

“To me it means these were probably not mailed, but hand-delivered.”

Callie began looking through the entire bundle. “Hey, not all of these are letters. Just the top four. The rest of these are torn-out journal pages, written on the back and front. And written crosswise too.”

“Crosswise.”

“They are written the way you normally write, front and back, then the pages are turned and written across. See?”

I took a look. Sure enough. I said, “How can you read something like that?”

“People used to do this to save paper, especially way back. You get used to reading it, I suppose. Where exactly did you find this?”

I told her.

“Let’s go look.”

I didn’t have anything else to do, so I agreed. Callie put the letters and the journal pages back, pushed the box under the bed.

She put on shoes and we went outside. Out back I showed her where I had found the box. Nub dug at the hole as if something might still be in it, then quit suddenly, charged into the woods, after who knows what.

Shortly thereafter, we heard Nub barking.

I called him, but he didn’t come.

“It is strange that it would be buried right here,” Callie said, “at the edge of the woods . . . Nub, shut up.”

“Don’t talk to Nub like that.”

“He’s giving me a headache.”

I called him again, but he still didn’t come. “Let’s look,” I said.

The woods were thick with pine trees and brambles. It was hard to follow Nub, but shortly we found him. He had his front feet against an old oak, his head thrown back, barking at a squirrel. All you could see of the squirrel was its tail blowing in the breeze.

I grabbed Nub by his collar, pulled him off the tree. His sharp little barks were making my back teeth hurt.

I said, “Hush, Nub.”

“My goodness, Stanley, look.”

I turned, didn’t see anything other than Callie, but as I looked closer, I realized there were some old porch steps half submerged in the earth. Then I saw the outline of a house, a large house.

Looking closer yet, I saw where lumber had rotted and fallen to the ground and was mostly covered with pine straw and oak leaves.

Callie glanced up. “My God.”

I looked. Shredded, rotted lumber hung from limbs like ugly Christmas decorations. There was a window frame with a broken piece of glass still in it, supported by a pine limb. A large piece of the roof frame was up there too. Even a blackened door where a limb had grown through where the doorknob had been.

Most peculiar was a circular iron staircase that began at the earth between two pines and wound upward to a height of thirty feet, intercepting pine boughs along the way, mixing between the railings until trees and stairs were one.

I examined the rusted stairway, saw that it was not actually touching the ground. It had been lifted several inches from the earth. I took hold of it and tugged.

“Don’t,” Callie said. “You’ll pull it down on your head.”

I climbed up a couple steps. “It’s firm, Callie. I could go all the way to the top.”

“Well, don’t.”

“You think a tornado got the house?”

“I don’t know. This didn’t happen a short time ago, but not a long time ago either. That big oak has been here for no telling how long, but those pines are young. The oak was probably in the side yard, but the pines, they’ve grown up since. Look.”

Callie bent, picked up a fragment of lumber that had been partially hidden under the pine straw.

She handed it to me. It was less than a foot of jagged, blackened board. It crumbled in my hand, leaving my fingers black.

“A fire, Stanley. The house burned down, and pieces of the house were slowly pushed up by the trees as they grew. Isn’t it amazing?”

“It’s creepy.”

“It was a big house, Stanley. I bet this is the center of it. The heart of the house.”

“You mean it was a mansion?”

“Seems that way. If it was, could be the box wasn’t buried at all. But in the fire it dropped through the burning floorboards and in time got covered. Grass grew up around it, water washed dirt over it. Everything shifted. And there it lay until you and Nub found it.”

Nub had fixed his mind on the squirrel again. It was running along a limb, looking down at Nub, making that peculiar chattering noise they make, slashing with its tail.

Nub managed to run up the slight slant of the oak’s trunk, and was now perched on a low-hanging limb barking at the squirrel.

Callie laughed, said, “Get that fool mutt down from there before he falls on his head.”

I called Nub, but he wouldn’t come. I finally climbed up and got him, swinging by my feet from the limb and handing Nub to Callie. I squirmed back onto the limb and climbed down.

“You’re such a bad dog,” I said, petting Nub on the head.

As we went out of the woods, the squirrel chattered loudly, calling for me to return his playmate.