anearlyfall

An Early Fall

Daddy beat Mr. Bailey dead but didn't nobody know but me.

I'd skipped school again, wandering the woods 'til Mama was on her way to work, trying to get there quick as she could after dropping Priscilla off at the babysitter's.

Then there was Daddy's leaving; that took a little longer. He'd long since told Mama he wasn't working for less than "a real man's wages," so most days he was at Mr. Bailey's pool hall. We both had to wait for it to open.

That day, home again, I crawled in through my unlocked bedroom window. I'd already eaten the lunch Mama had packed, so first I went to the kitchen and made myself another bologna sandwich, drank three glasses of milk. I snatched an apple and munched on it as I walked back to my room, hiding the core in my pocket.

When Mama found her groceries gone, she'd blame Daddy — "You don't ever pay for it, but Lord you'll eat it up!" she'd yell again.

Daddy didn't always deny it. He was thought to be the only one ever at the house during the day. When he was drunk, and that was frequent, he didn't always remember where he'd been or what he'd done (for that Mama relied on the neighbor's gossiping).

"Then who ate it?" Mama would demand to know.

Daddy was quick to avoid the idea that he'd brought someone else into his wife's house so most times, he'd give in, say maybe he had eaten it.

In the room I shared with Priscilla, I squeezed in between her crib and my bed, lifted the mattress and took the two comic books I'd swiped from the drugstore out from underneath. Back in the kitchen, I got the flashlight from the corner cabinet and headed out the back door, locking it as I went.

On my belly, comic books between my pressed lips, I dragged myself into the space beneath the wooden porch where I went when I didn't want to be found: when I skipped school, when Daddy was on a rampage, when Mama took to crying.

I settled into my hole, turned the flashlight on, ready to read the latest about my hero before I slept, dreams full of adventure and fun.

"You don't want me to call the police, Douglass," a man said above me.

I flicked the light off.

"You go'n do what you want. You can't prove nothing," Daddy said.

There was scuffling on the porch and Daddy said, "We at my place now."

"Get your hands off me!"

I tried to place the voice.

Feet trampled down the steps, an angry dance with Daddy's heavy boots leading.

"You came here for me, didn't you?" Daddy asked, his breath rising. "Come and get what you came for."

Then there was the sound I knew better than anything I'd ever heard: Daddy's hand against someone.

It was when the man fell that I saw that it was Mr.Bailey.

On his back, he reached out to keep Daddy away but Daddy was on him soon as Mr. Bailey hit the ground.

The front of Mr. Bailey's shirt tightly gripped in his left hand, Daddy held him up off the ground so the boulder of his right could beat him down.

Five.

Six.

Mr. Bailey's arms gave up their struggle.

Seven. . .

Daddy was ready to hit him once more but he didn't. He let go of Mr. Bailey's shirt and the man thumped to the ground, his head turned toward me, a red web trickling across his face.

Daddy stood. He took some deep breaths. He used a foot to prod Mr. Bailey.

"Ain't got much to say now, do you?" Daddy asked him.

--

I ran, first chance I got. Scrambling from under the porch, back to the woods; running 'til a pain started up my side and I had to stop, clinging to a tree, my belly tightening and spitting up everything: the bologna, the bread, bits of the apple.

--

I entered the house through the front door. Mama came out of the kitchen, stood in the doorway and eyed me.

"Boy, where have you been?" She didn't wait for an answer. "And didn't I tell you to change out of your school clothes 'fore you went out messing around? You act like you do laundry here. Go'n change and get in here and eat."

As I passed her, I looked into the kitchen. Daddy was at the table. He looked at me. I shivered, something strong enough to make me wobble.

"What's wrong with you?" Mama asked.

I didn't turn around. "Nothing," I said.

In my room, I sat on my bed and tried to make sense of it.

All day I'd thought that I'd been at the picture show. There would be a point where it would be over and I'd get up, walk into the bright sunshine as if nothing had happened.

But something had –

I was shocked but not surprised that Daddy had killed someone; I just always thought it would be Mama or me.

Mama was just getting off the phone when I entered the kitchen. I was afraid it was the principal calling but Mama didn't even look at me. She asked Daddy, "You go to Bailey's today?"

I almost dropped the plate I'd taken from the cabinet.

Mama frowned at me. She took the plate, nudged me with her elbow to my place at the table and put the dish before me. "Seems he didn't open up and ain't nobody seen him."

What you 'spect me to do? I asked those dead eyes staring.

Daddy shook his head. "I was working," he said.

"Where?"

"Other side of town, for some white man."

"What white man?"

Daddy shrugged. "I don't know his name. You always gotta question me. I work and still that ain't good enough."

"He pay you?"

"Gave me cash." Daddy got up from his seat a little, reached into his pocket and pulled money out. He threw it on the table.

Mama picked the bills up, one by one, straightening and counting as she did. Reaching past Daddy's hand, she asked "What'd you do?"

He'd grabbed hold of Mr. Bailey's ankles and pulled.

I listened to the noises, using the sounds to imagine what was going on. The creaking -- the shed door being opened. Daddy's steps disappearing—him going into the shed. His steps returning.

I inched my body around.

The shovel blade slashed into the ground. Hills of dirt piled up around Daddy's feet. He jumped into the hole and threw more sand upward 'til he was happy with how big it was and he climbed out.

Daddy turned his hand, looked at the swollen knuckles, the skin broke open. "Got it caught 'tween some chest of drawers and that man's truck."

Mama folded the bills and tucked them inside her dress as she moved to the sink. "You gonna work for him tomorrow?"

Squatting, Daddy went through Mr. Bailey's pockets, finding the wallet and emptying it. He tossed it into the hole before he stood and used his foot to shove Mr. Bailey over into it as well.

"Nah," Daddy told Mama. "The man that gave me that money is long gone."

--

I tried to pay attention to Mrs. Wagner at the blackboard but everything she wrote seemed to be in a language I didn't understand. My eyes kept traveling back to Richard's empty desk.

Daddy shoveled dirt back into the hole 'til it was no more. He ran his feet against the ground.

"Bastard," he said before he returned the shovel to the shed.

The tapping on my desktop broke my trance.

Mrs. Wagner stood beside me, pointer in hand. "It would be nice, if you're going to be here, that you to pay attention."

From her desk a row over, two seats up, Sherrie Turner laughed.

I looked down at my pencil in my hand.

"Is there something on your mind, Kenneth?"

I looked up.

"You have a question all over your face," Mrs. Wagner told me.

"Is Richard coming back?" I asked.

Mrs. Wagner looked at me, sighed, and then walked up the aisle to her desk. "Some of you know that Richard's family is experiencing a crisis at this time. It is improper to gossip about the lives of others; still we hope that this will pass quickly and Richard will return to class. Now, back to our lesson."

Later, as the class began to line up for recess, a row at a time, I was surprised when Sherrie turned in her seat toward me.

"You are so uncouth," she said.

I didn't know what the word meant. Maybe it had been on the vocabulary list on a day when I'd skipped. The way it smacked me across the face, I didn't think it meant anything good.

--

Richard and Sherrie were neighbors. They lived on the street where the better Negroes lived. We all went to the same school, but they acted like we weren't all the same.

With Richard gone, I thought maybe Sherrie would be nicer to others, so she wouldn't have to play alone, but during our free time in the classroom, Sherrie didn't play cards with no one. No games. She didn't talk. She sat at her desk, a notebook open in front of her, one hand holding a bunch of crayons.

I went over to her.

On the page before her were some flowers, the petals a bright and different color--blue, purple, yellow-- from the one beside it. There were bees and butterflies dancing around, and in each corner of the paper was a heart with some curling lines around it.

"Who's that for?" I asked.

Sherrie drew a smiling face in the center of a flower as she said, "Not for you."

Her words were those bees flying off the page and stinging me.

"It's ugly anyhow," I told her. "Don't no flowers look like that."

I stood there, waiting for her to look up, for her to say something, but she just kept on coloring.

--

Mama was again talking about Mr. Bailey being missing, three days.

Daddy shushed her. "That ol' fool gone, ain't no loss. You making me more eggs?"

Mama walked over from the stove, flung the scrambled yellow and white on Daddy's plate. Turning back, she asked what he was planning for the day.

"I got some work lined up," he replied, even though it was Sunday. "Today and tomorrow."

Folks said Daddy was a good handyman if you could catch him not drunk or mad.

"Can I work with Daddy tomorrow?"

Richard was going to be back in class. Mrs. Wagner had told us beforehand so we'd be prepared. I didn't know what would happen, me and him in the same room. I was afraid he'd look at me, know what Daddy had done and blame me.

Mama looked over her shoulder at me. "No," she said.

"You let me before."

"That was just for the summer."

"Ain't nothing wrong with him enjoying some hard work," Daddy told her. "And we could use the money. Extra hands, extra dollars."

"What would be 'right,'" Mama told him, "is for you to enjoy some hard work 'cause, yes, we could use the money. What that boy could use is his education." Mama began snatching breakfast dishes off the table.

Daddy was about to say something to that, but Mama stopped him.

"Don't be putting ideas in his head. He is not staying here," she said for the millionth time. She always sounded like she had some kind of hope for me.

"He's not ending up like you," Mama said.

I expected Daddy to jump up, for him and her to start wrestling around the room, me only watching 'cause Daddy had knocked me down that one time I'd tried to stand up for her, but he just sat there.

His face had twitched when her words reached him, but then he grunted, dug his fork deep into his food. As he brought it to his mouth, he asked, "And there's something wrong with me? Why don't you tell me what that is? You must be some kind of expert on me seeing you've stayed all these years."

Mama had been scraping food off the plates into a paper bag on the counter and she froze for a moment at Daddy's words, then she continued, though from where I sat, I could see her hands trembling. She set the pile of plates in the sink, deep in the soapy water. Drying her hands on the dishrag, she said, "He's going to school." She threw the towel down on the counter, plucked Priscilla from her high chair and left the room.

I turned to Daddy.

He had his elbows on the table, his hands in the air, a fork in one, a piece of toast in the other. He was staring at nothing before him while laughing to himself and shaking his head. He finished eating, a grin on his face.

--

In her Monday morning rushing around, Mama set my lunch on the table before me. She slapped a folded piece of paper beside it. "That there's a note lying and saying you were sick on that day you skipped," she told me before she walked out into the hall. She came back in, putting on her jacket. "If that principal calls me one more time at my job," she warned.

"You ain't been going to school?" Daddy asked me, his voice rough like he wanted to fight and everyone was headed out the door.

"I'm going to school," I said.

"He's going to school," Mama told Daddy, "'cause I'm taking him. That note's for some day last week."

"What day?"

"Tuesday," I lied.

"It don't make no difference," Mama said, "just as long as he keep going."

Daddy looked like he was thinking real hard on something he couldn't figure out.

I gave him a hint. "Maybe it was Thursday," I said.

Daddy's face twitched.

"Boy, we need to go." Mama grabbed Priscilla's bag and headed out.

As I snatched up my lunch bag, Daddy looked at me. I met his eyes. I smiled at him.

Daddy turned away.

"Whatchu grinning about?" Mama asked when I got in the car.

"Nothing," I said, but it was something, that feeling of Daddy in my hand.

--

Richard was already sitting at his desk when the class came in after the morning bell. Some of the others said things to him as they passed. I went to my desk and sat down.

When Mrs. Wagner came in, she took Richard's chin in her hand and lifted his face to her. She told him something though it was too low for me to hear.

I decided then that I wasn't going to feel sorry for him. Or his daddy. Hadn't Mr. Bailey threatened my daddy with the police?

Class started and went on as usual 'cept Richard didn't try to answer all the questions Mrs. Wagner asked. In fact, he didn't answer none.

As the day went on, it got easier to pay him no mind. I buried any guilt and fear deep as his daddy. For once, in the same room with him, I didn't feel as pitiful as he looked.

Just before the final school bell rang and we left the classroom, row by row, Sherrie got up and walked over to Richard's desk. She was carrying her notebook and she tore a page out which she gave to him.

Richard looked at the paper. He smiled, the first time that day.

I felt something burn inside me. I wanted to go and pound him into the floor.

Sherrie went back to her chair. When her row was getting up after the bell rang, I rushed from my desk, cutting the line.

"Kenneth!"

I ignored Mrs. Wagner.

I made my way through to catch up to Sherrie. "Why'd you make him that picture?" I demanded, getting in front of her. There were times I hurt over my daddy just as bad.

She tried to get past me.

I wouldn't let her. I pushed her.

"Leave me alone," she hissed.

I pushed her again.

"I try'n be nice to you!" I told her.

I grabbed her arm.

"Kenneth!"

Sherrie jerked herself free and I let go at the same time. She fell, books spilling around her.

Mrs. Wagner, her eyes all big, looked like she wanted to grab me but she knelt to help Sherrie instead.

I pushed through everybody and ran off the school grounds before any teacher could catch me.

I was crying even as I fell to my knees, but just as quick my tears stopped and I started laughing.

Maybe Richard would have to live with never knowing what happened to his daddy—my daddy said

those white police weren't gonna look too hard-- and if Sherrie was as smart as she thought, she'd have to see that she and Richard weren't so special, no matter where they lived.

I swiped at my face and stood.

I headed home -- where Daddy had beat Mr. Bailey dead and might nobody ever know but me.