One Mississippi Read online

  We glided by, taking it in. The cop pressed Red’s cheek against the hood.

  I held my breath to the end of the block. I didn’t dare look at Tim. I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking it too.

  Finally Tim said, “Did he see us?”

  “I don’t think so. There was a lot going on.”

  “Red Martin,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “Arnita said he was drunk.”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “Could you see her?”

  “Just, she was on the stretcher, I . . . no.”

  “They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, did they?” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good sign.”

  “Yeah, I know. Jesus, Tim. We gotta go back.”

  “Red knocked her off that bike, Skippy. He did. Before we did. You saw it happen. It’s the truth. He drove off and left her on the ground, right? You saw it. She could have got hurt then.” His voice was growing calmer every second. “I mean, we were trying to help her. Red is the one who was bothering her.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He looked sideways at me. “Red did this. Not us. Okay, it’s not exactly the way it happened, but in a way it is, see? Red’s the one who’s drunk. Not us. He was hassling her. We stopped to help her. You see what I mean?”

  “So what do you want us to do?”

  “Nothing. We go home and wait. See what happens. Maybe she’ll be okay. Maybe they’ll let Red go. I don’t know. We just have to see.”

  We circled around on Larry Lane. Tim took a roundabout route through the backstreets of the subdivisions, away from the busy streets.

  “What happens when Arnita tells them it was us?”

  He shrugged. “She hit her head, right? She’s probably confused. We stopped to help her, that’s when she saw us. We went to call for help. Who do they think called the ambulance? We even drove by a second time, to make sure the ambulance came. And it did.”

  I peered at him. “Wow, you’re good at this.”

  “It’s all new to me,” he said.

  “Take me home, Tim,” I said.

  “That’s where we’re going. Right now.” He switched on the radio, a loud used car commercial. He switched it off again. We drove out into the country, where the roads were fast and the Buick’s high beams pushed back the darkness. “It’s gonna be fine, Skippy.”

  “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  He tried the radio again. The Spirit 99 deejay was sending late-night dedications to Bunny in Yazoo City from a secret admirer, to Randy from Tina with a love that will never die, to T.J. in Vicksburg love you always from Carol, “and a very special Prom Night dedication from the twins to Daniel and Tim,” he said. “Whoa, twins on Prom Night! Is anybody having fuuuuun?”

  “Oh my God,” Tim said. “They called the radio station. I don’t believe it. It wasn’t enough for them to put our names on the garage door.”

  I leaned my face against the cool glass. “I just hope we didn’t kill Arnita.”

  “Well, so do I.”

  “Really? Is that what you hope?”

  “Of course! What do you think?”

  “It’s hard to tell with you tonight,” I said. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I turned on him. “What is it, Tim? Why are you so scared of the cops? You’ve been in trouble before, right?”

  “Once.” His eyes never left the road.

  “For what?”

  He blew out a breath. “It was last Thanksgiving. Reckless driving. I never told you or anybody. I spent the night in jail. I used my one phone call to tell my folks I was spending the night at your house. Thank God you didn’t call me that night.”

  “Reckless driving, what is that? That’s not so bad,” I said, although it did sound serious.

  “It was bad enough. They suspended my license for six months. Nobody knows that either.”

  “Well damn, Tim. And you’re still driving?”

  “Not after tonight. Believe me, I’m taking this car home and I’m never driving again. Just get me home tonight, Jesus. I swear I’ll ride my bike from now on.” He snatched off his bow tie, flung it out the window.

  “You’re gonna have to pay for that.”

  “That is the least of my problems,” he said.

  Buena Vista Drive led up a low hill. A split rail fence marked the beginning of our yard. Normally I hated that yard and every blade of grass on it, but tonight it looked like home and I was glad to see it. Mom had left the porch light on for me.

  “We can’t leave it like this, Tim. It’s not right.”

  “Call me tomorrow,” he said. “For now, just don’t tell anybody. For God’s sake don’t tell your folks.”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  He turned into our driveway, setting up a howl from Mrs. Grissom’s beagle across the street.

  “Call me first thing,” Tim said. “No. I’ll call you. You’ll be home?”

  “Yeah, I always stay with Jacko while they go to church.”

  “You okay, Durwood?”

  “No, I am not okay.”

  He squeezed my arm — an invitation to join in, play along, stick together, help him tell a very big Lie.

  I slammed the door. He waved and drove off. I stood breathing the piney air of Buena Vista Drive as Mrs. Grissom’s dog howled at me.

  If we hadn’t stopped to kiss those girls at the Jitney Jungle, Arnita would be home in bed now, with her roses and her crown on the nightstand beside her.

  If I hadn’t grabbed the wheel . . .

  We ran over the Queen of the Prom. We didn’t mean to do it. But leaving the scene — leaving her lying on the ground — that we did on purpose.

  I was amazed by Tim’s coolness under fire, his ability to calculate his next move while the situation was unraveling. He was figuring out our alibi while I was still in the first shock of seeing Arnita on the ground.

  “Shut up, dog,” I yelled. The beagle obeyed. Poor dumb dog, it was just waiting for someone to say shut up.

  Our house was asleep. I tugged off my bow tie and went in as quietly as I could. As I reached in the fridge for orange juice Mom appeared, heavy-eyed, in her flannel robe. “Hey honey, how was your prom?”

  “Good, Mom. Go back to bed.”

  “What time is it?” She pushed hair from her eyes.

  “Almost one,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  “No, I want to hear all about it. Pour me a glass of milk.”

  “It’s late. We can talk about it tomorrow. We don’t want to wake him up.” I jerked my head in the direction of Dad.

  “How was Dianne? Did y’all have fun? Did she look pretty in her prom dress?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “On the way there I got a bloody nose.”

  “Oh honey, no.” She patted my arm. When I was a kid I had bloody noses all the time, and Mom was always the one who sat up with me until it stopped.

  “It wasn’t so bad. Just a little one.”

  “Did it spoil your whole evening?”

  “No. We had fun. We danced and everything.”

  When she blinked, her eyes wanted to stay closed. “Oh sweetie, I was hoping you’d have a perfect night.”

  “We did, don’t worry. It was fine.” I felt so much older than my mother just then. Lying to her, to keep her from worrying. Mom was prettier than Doris Day, with long wavy hair, light gold like an ice-cream cone. At the moment she looked like a sleepy little girl. I took a slug of juice from the carton. “Go to bed, Mom. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

  “Don’t put that carton back after you’ve drunk from it.” She leaned up to kiss me. “Look at my little baby, all grown up.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Night, honey. Turn off the lights, okay?”

  “Night, Mom.”

  Half a carton of orange juice didn’t begin to slake my thirst. I moved on to ginger ale. I gulped
it down so fast it sent a big gingery belch ripping up through my nose.

  I went in from the kitchen to find Jacko hunched on the floor beside my bed. “Damn, Jacko! You scared me!”

  His eyes gleamed. “Somebody dead,” he announced.

  “What are you doing up? It’s late.”

  “Somebody dead,” he said. “What you know about it?”

  “What are you talking about, old man? You having another one of your bad dreams?”

  “Ain’t no dream,” he said.

  “Well then, you must be crazy,” I said. “But that’s not exactly news.” I was polite to Jacko only within earshot of Mom. He lived in the room next to mine, in the converted garage I had named the Freak Annex. If I didn’t snap back at him, he would drive me nuts with all his creepy muttering and cackling. His latest notion was that he had buried bags of gold all over our yard and our neighbor Mrs. Wagner across the street was sneaking in at night with a shovel, digging it up while we slept.

  I rolled him back to his room. “Go on to bed, Jacko. I ain’t putting up with your mess tonight.” I heaved the sliding door shut behind me.

  I flopped on my bed. I stared at my Beatles poster, and Hair, and Roger Daltrey looking blind on the album cover of Tommy.

  I heard Jacko laughing in there.

  I felt so lost, so alone. It was just me, and the memory of Arnita stretched on the ground with her head resting against the sidewalk.

  5

  BY THE TIME I got up, Jacko was puttering in his tackle boxes and Janie and Mom were already off at church. The burnt-toast smell of the kitchen put me in a dark mood. I wandered into the family room, kicking the stupid ottoman, flinging myself onto the stupid sofa. I hated this half-empty house, the cheap furniture we’d picked up at garage sales, thrift shops, along the side of the road. Mississippi had brought us nothing but bad luck from the very first day.

  We should have stayed in Indiana. Bud and I tried to tell them, but did they ever listen to us? Did any parents ever listen to their kids?

  The phone jangled me out of my chair.

  “Arnita’s alive,” Tim said.

  Oh God, thank you God. I pressed the phone to my mouth. All morning I’d been staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring. Trying to pretend Prom Night was a bad dream.

  “She’s at Baptist Hospital,” Tim said. “Intensive care, but they wouldn’t tell me her condition. You have to be a member of the family. . . . Dagwood? You there?”

  My voice came out a croak. “How did you find her?”

  “I called every hospital in town.”

  “You didn’t tell them our names, did you? I mean — should we even be talking about this on the phone?” These were Watergate days. You never knew who might be listening.

  “Wait, that’s not all I found out. They arrested Red Martin on a DWI. He spent the night in jail. His daddy bailed him out this morning.”

  I turned to find Jacko in the doorway, watching me with his blue beady eyes. I stretched the phone cord into the living room, shut the door on the cord, and dropped my voice. “Look, we can’t just sit back and let Red get in all this trouble.”

  “Since when are you concerned about Red? Are you forgetting he’s like the world’s biggest asshole?”

  “So what? That’s no reason to let him take all the blame for this.”

  “Sure it is. Name me a better reason.” Tim’s tone was precise. “I told you, I cannot be involved with this accident, Durwood. I’ve got too much at stake.”

  “Look, what if we call the police,” I proposed. “Anonymously. We don’t give ’em our names. We just tell ’em we are certain Red didn’t do it. Tell ’em we can’t get involved, but he’s definitely innocent.” I knew it was a bad idea before I got through describing it.

  Tim said, “Yeah, that is too brilliant.”

  “Well? We have to do something.”

  He made a skeptical grunt. “March down to the jailhouse and turn ourselves in?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Well then do it! Go ahead! Fuck up your life — and my life too.”

  I said, “We did a pretty good job fucking up her life, huh?”

  “For the thousandth time, goddammit, it was an accident!”

  “Not the part where you drove off and left her,” I whispered furiously. “That was you. Your decision. You were the one driving. Not me.” There, I said it. No more of this “we.” Lay it on the table, just who did what.

  “Hey. What do you want me to say? I freaked out, so did you.”

  “No, I was yelling at you to go back the whole time. And you didn’t freak out, Tim. That’s what was so weird. You were cool, you were just so cool.”

  “In a situation like that you gotta think fast,” he said, “or you’re completely screwed.”

  I thought, Yeah? And where has your fast thinking gotten us?

  “Listen, Skippy, call me if you hear something. Otherwise, see you at school mañana. Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Later —”

  I hung up. I was not in the mood for the game.

  I found Jacko in the family room watching our Sunday-morning favorite, Channel Four, the Reverend Alfred L. Poole live from the Faith Holiness Tabernacle Church in Vicksburg. Reverend Poole was a plump, shiny man, with pink skin and a lofty black pompadour. “Jaheezus, our Lowered, is looking down upawn us right now,” he intoned. “Those of you with crippuling injuries, place your hands atop your television consoles at home, and receive the holy healing power of the Lowered.”

  Jacko liked the man’s curdly voice and the way he smote the cripples on the forehead to heal them. He said maybe someday I could drive him to Vicksburg and get Reverend Poole to heal his legs.

  Janie came clacking through the door in church shoes, then Mom, overflowing with news of Arnita Beecham. The whole town was talking about the poor girl, skull fracture, brain injury, coma, hit-and-run, the Martin boy arrested on the spot.

  I put on my most neutral expression. “Yeah, Tim called. It’s terrible. You heard she was elected Prom Queen last night? She was so happy.”

  “Those poor people, her mama and daddy,” Mom said. “You know her, Daniel?”

  “Oh sure, I even voted for her. She’s in the band, and two of my classes. She’s super smart. Pretty too.”

  When I told her that Arnita’s father was the school janitor, I thought Mom might cry. “This is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. We have to do something for them.”

  “I’m not that good a friend, Mom. I just know her from school.”

  “She needs all the friends she can get. I’ll bake a cake one day next week. We’ll take it over there, and you can cut their grass for them or something.”

  I caught Jacko squinting at me with one blue eye. I stuck out my tongue.

  Jacko went into a coughing fit. Mom reached down to hammer his back. “Okay now, honey, tell me everything. What did the girls wear? Did you dance?”

  “Yeah, we danced. They wore these long dresses.” I eased up from the sofa. “I got grass to cut, Mom. I better get to it.” That’s how desperate I was — I would rather cut grass than sit there and be interrogated one more second. The next innocent question might lead me to break down and tell her everything. I couldn’t stand Jacko’s blue eye on me.

  Next morning the school bus hummed with rumors. Arnita was in serious condition, possibly critical. Red Martin knocked her off her bike on purpose. Or by accident. He was drunk. Or maybe he had nothing to do with it, just happened to drive by with an open beer and the cops pulled him over.

  The black kids huddled at the back of the bus, more silent than ever.

  When we turned onto Barnett Street everybody hurried to the left side of the bus to see where it happened. Nobody could figure out which driveway exactly. I kept my eyes fixed on the jumble of equations in my algebra book.

  Dianne Frillinger was waiting when I got off the bus. In the light of day, in her shapeless plaid jumper, she had resumed her old identity. I fel
t a little queasy at the memory of the Jitney Jungle parking lot.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, “it’s so awful about Arnita, did you hear?”

  I nodded. “But she’s gonna be okay, right?”

  “It sounds real bad. Oh Daniel, I just feel so guilty, you know? Like it’s all my fault!”

  “Your fault?”

  “Well — we were so horrible about her when she won! When I think of the things I said about her . . . of course I had no idea that was going to happen. Let me tell you, I almost wish I was a” — she dropped to a whisper — “a Catholic so I could go to confession. You were right, Daniel, I was just awful.”

  “Listen, Dianne —”

  “And Debbie feels terrible too. Please, please don’t think we meant anything about Arnita. I had the nicest time at the prom, truly I did, and I’d hate it if you thought I was prejudiced or anything. Especially after her accident.”

  “Forget it.” I tried to escape, but she had my arm in a vise.

  “But I did have the nicest time the other night,” she said.

  “Yeah, except for that damn seat belt,” I said.

  Her braces sparkled. “That made it memorable. Mama says thirty years from now that’s the part we’ll remember the most.”

  “Great, I’m glad you told her all about it.” I made a subtle move to detach my arm from her grip. “You think Red ran over Arnita on purpose?”

  “They say it was an accident, but who knows? We saw him leaving the Holiday Inn, remember? He was definitely intoxicated.”

  “They must not think he’s too guilty, right? If they let him out of jail.”

  “He plays football. He’ll be fine.” She made a face. “Anyway, a bunch of the girls are going to the hospital tonight to see Arnita. They’re working on a special song for her.”

  I wanted a report on Arnita’s condition. “You going?”

  “Oh I don’t think so . . . wouldn’t it be kind of hypocritical? After the things I said?”

  “It might make you feel better,” I said.

  “Our pastor offered a special prayer for her yesterday. They’ve never prayed for a black before. Not in our church. Oh Daniel, it’s just too unbelievable.”