This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © 2018 by R. L. Toalson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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ISBN 978-1-4998-0717-2
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To Memaw and Grandad’n, wish you were here
— RT
America preaches integration and practices segregation.
—Malcolm X
The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.
—Dorothy Day
CONTENTS
Spring 1972
Rain
Earth
Night
Birthday
Divorce
Charlie
Sing
Fight
Run
Shots
School
Eyes
Friends
Milo
Woods
Smiles
Leaf
Sister
Brave
Caught
Number
Apology
Shoe
Strong
Spot
Draw
Magnificent
Lights
Words
Outrun
Question
People
Room
Choice
Face
Granddad
Play
News
Laugh
Notes
Summer 1972
Pencil
Try
Ready
Shed
Art
Dark
Hand
Lock
Breakfast
Empty
Cup
Mama
Summer
Supper
Cloud
Tired
Miss
Home
Porch
Glad
Name
Letters
Curtain
Secrets
Question
Surprise
Garden
Love
Flower
Forgotten
Call
Trip
Day
Eat
Star
Afraid
Tour
Teacher
Echo
Gone
Search
Walk
Care
Speak
Bury
Grave
Worn
Cake
Party
Fall 1972
First
Protest
Meet
Class
Impossible
Hands
Bully
Bent
Next
Desk
Paint
Mother
Friend
Building
Good
Start
Truth
Cry
Knowing
Web
Forgiveness
Street
Watch
Pain
Lonely
Safe
Easy
Run
Note
Hallway
Screaming
Broken
Wrong
Ripples
Back
Help
Frozen
Brother
Dragon
Mean
Found
Understand
Sorry
Breathe
Sky
Hole
Swinging
Hope
Memory
Eyes
Shower
Cookie
Armor
Winter 1972-73
Promise
Unfold
Stay
Killers
Choose
Picture
Rose
Here
Brave
Lost
Singing
Storm
Know
Die
Heart
Petals
Flowers
Plan
Visitor
Doorway
Complicated
Mixing
Colors
Changing
Heavy
Answers
Truth
Sit
Gift
Hug
Brother
Christmas
Road
Spring 1973
Mama
Name
Wall
Goodbye
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
SPRING 1972
RAIN
Most nights
I sleep just fine
because most nights
it doesn’t rain.
The last time it rained like this
we drove past that curve
Gran always called dangerous
and saw lights flashing red and blue
and people walking around
and a body covered
with a white sheet
that glowed in the dark.
Mama didn’t slow down long enough
to look at the twisted car.
It was too dark to see, anyhow.
We didn’t know who was
under the sheet, but Mama said
a prayer for their family
as we drove on by.
EARTH
Granddad came over last month
and planted cabbage, yellow squash,
peppers, and okra
in the little square of dirt
my daddy marked.
Me and Charlie
tried to tell him
we don’t like cabbage
or yellow squash or peppers.
We didn’t mention the okra,
on account of Gran’s fried okra,
which is the best fried okra
you’ve ever tasted.
Granddad said those are
the only vegetables
that will grow in a Texas garden
this time of year.
He said, You never know
when you’ll need
something to eat,
and he just kept digging
with his pale, spotted hands.
Granddad says
things like that
all the time.
Mama says he lived
through the Great Depression,
back when a whole lot of people
went hungry.
I watched him
the whole time he planted.
He looked a lot
like my daddy,
long legs folded up,
head bent so I couldn’t see
the white of his hair,
overalls pulled tight
across his back.
He
touched the earth
like it was alive.
NIGHT
The night my daddy left us,
after we drove past
that dangerous curve
and thought it had
nothing to do with us,
a black sky dropped
cold-water blankets
on me and Charlie
and Mama
while we stood
in the dark
trying to understand
what those flashing lights meant.
I didn’t sleep
for twenty-seven hours.
BIRTHDAY
My aunt Bee
calls me Paulie,
no matter how many times
for that nickname.
John Paul Sanders, Jr.,
is my real name,
but Paulie is what
she’d called my daddy.
Tonight, she’s brought us supper,
since it’s Saturday,
and Mama works late
waiting tables at a diner in town.
She spreads it all out on the table—
greasy chicken and
mashed potatoes and
rolls so buttery
they leave gray rings
on the white bag.
She tears off the receipt
with today’s date,
April 16, 1972,
Mama’s birthday.
She missed the Apollo 16 launch,
just like she’s missing supper.
Aunt Bee knows
Mama won’t be home
until later. She says,
Go on, then, and I dig in.
Milo sits underneath the table,
his long pink tongue hanging out,
ears cocked toward Aunt Bee.
She doesn’t like it when
we feed him with food
from our table.
She says it spoils dogs.
I slip him a roll anyway.
A chocolate cake waits for Mama
in the icebox.
DIVORCE
Aunt Bee’s husband divorced her
a long time ago,
so she comes to see us a lot.
Sometimes she washes dishes
and sometimes she
sorts the clothes.
Most of the time,
she brings us suppers
she didn’t cook.
When I asked,
Mama said that
Aunt Bee’s husband
didn’t divorce her
on account of
her not knowing
how to cook.
CHARLIE
Charlie’s hung some lights
on the walls of the family room.
Mama won’t like the holes,
but even I think the lights
are pretty.
Every other minute,
Charlie looks at the clock,
her white face glowing
red and then blue in the lights.
Shouldn’t she be here
by now? she says.
She only works ’til seven.
Her voice shakes a little,
and I feel it shake my chest.
Once a parent leaves,
you wonder if it might
happen again.
She’ll be here soon, Charlotte,
Aunt Bee says.
Mama says Charlie’s
a terrible nickname for a girl.
I think it fits her just fine,
since Charlie’s the only girl
I know who climbs trees
higher than me and
drives Granddad’s tractor
and swims in a dirty pond
full of snakes.
Aunt Bee puts her arm
around Charlie,
and even though she’s twelve,
Charlie looks real small.
Aunt Bee smiles at me.
You’ll lead the song? she says.
She’s asked me once already.
I think she’s just trying
to fill the space where
Mama should be by now.
SING
My daddy used to sing all the time.
Mama called it loud and obnoxious,
but me and Charlie
loved to hear him sing.
He’d sing in the morning
when he turned on our light
to wake us up for school,
and sometimes he’d sing in the evening
when he turned it off.
He was a good daddy
on the nights he sang.
I try not to think about
the nights he didn’t.
Your daddy had a
one-of-a-kind voice,
Aunt Bee says. Lucky he
passed it on to you.
She whispers the last words
like it’s something great to sing
like my daddy.
He was in a band once.
That’s how Mama met him.
He used to tell us the story
back when we all
ate supper together,
how she showed up
the night his band
was playing at a bar
and he fell in love
as soon as he saw her.
He’d always wink at Mama
when he said that.
FIGHT
I do know
my daddy liked bars
too much.
He was in a bar the night he left.
I heard Mama tell Aunt Bee
he was so drunk
he beat a man to death.
The man’s friends chased him
around that wet, dangerous curve.
And when his car left the road,
they shot him,
right in the heart, three times.
I guess they wanted to make sure
he didn’t get back up.
I wasn’t supposed to
hear this, of course.
But nobody ever tells
me and Charlie anything,
real good in doorways.
I never did hear why
my daddy fought in the
first place. I sure would
like to know that.
RUN
Mama walks through the door then,
so I don’t have to
think about it anymore.
I break into song,
with the voice of my daddy,
and I’m halfway finished,
almost to her name,
before I realize no one else
is singing. Charlie’s crying
on the couch and
Aunt Bee’s walking Mama
to the chair right beside
my daddy’s old one.
No one sits in
my daddy’s chair anymore.
Mama’s black eyes are shiny
and her face is red.
She leans her head
back against the chair.
Her brown hair’s stuck in strings
across her cheeks.
Paulie, why don’t you
go get your mama something
to drink? Aunt Bee says,
and Charlie makes a noise
that squeezes my chest.
Aunt Bee eyes Charlie,
then looks back at me.
But I can only see Mama,
looking like my daddy used to look
right before he turned mean and wild,
and I bolt from the house,
like it’s a reflex,
door slamming behind me.
It’s almost dark.
Mama doesn’t let me
go out after dark.
But I just run.
Paulie! Aunt Bee shouts
from the porch.
I feel warm all over,
even though it’s cool out here,
since spring only just began,
and I stop only to turn around
and yell, I’m not Paulie anymore!
I head toward the woods,
Milo’s four legs keeping time
behind me.
She’ll leave,
she’ll leave,
she’ll leave,
my feet say,
over and over and over.
I try to outrun
all the words
my feet say.
SHOTS
The day my daddy left for good,
we sat on our porch,
waiting for him
to come home
like he always did.
We watched for his
electric-blue Fairlane with
rusted-out doors
and a droopy ceiling,
and we listened for its tires
popping over gravel.
I played with Milo that day,
throwing a ball he’d
always bring back,
and Charlie rocked in the
chair Granddad made her,
and we tried not to notice
the sun setting.
The sky caught fire
and started fading,
like it knew what was coming
and wanted to get away.
And then all those clouds
rolled in real soft and quiet,
without warning,
and before we knew it,
everything around us
turned black and wet.
Mama packed us
in Gran’s car and
took us looking,
even though she always
did the looking by herself.
Maybe she knew
what was coming, too.
Flashing lights were
coloring our driveway
when Mama pulled back in.
I’ve never seen Gran
and Granddad run
across the street
like they did that night,
Gran in her nightgown,
shaking in the rain,
shouting for her boy.
Granddad pulled her,
dripping, to the porch
and held her while
a different rain fell.
Mama stood alone.
I’d heard the shots,
right after the sky
opened up.
Mama says that can’t be,
seeing as it happened
a whole nine miles
from our house.
But I did.
SCHOOL
Me and Charlie
went to school
four days after that,
on Friday, spelling-test day.
That week we only had
nine words instead of
the usual ten.
We’ve never had only
nine words.
I hate the number nine.
It means something
I don’t understand.
Nine miles left,
almost home,
and then gone.
When I numbered my test,
before my teacher
called out the words,