Boy, Snow, Bird(67)
Alecto Fletcher was the only one I could tell about Charlie and Arturo—without using their names, of course. I said: “Suppose there’s a woman who’s finding that she’s only really started to love somebody now that somebody else has stopped loving her—do you think that’s real, or would you say this woman’s just trying to make the best of things?”
Alecto picked caviar out of her teeth and said: “Well.”
“I’m asking for a friend.”
“Were those exact words said: ‘I no longer love you’?”
“No.”
“No. Hardly anybody ever says it like that, do they? They simply become unkind. Look—for some people love is like a king they swear allegiance to. That kind of person has to be released from one bond before they can begin to forge another. All very conventional behavior, but fiercely interior convention. I’m not trying to imply that such people are wise or that they impress me—I’m one of them, and it’s probably the most futile form of integrity going. But if it’s a side dish to other forms of integrity, then it’s all right. And there are worse scenarios, Boy.”
“Worse scenarios than what?”
“Than love not beginning on time, of course.”
All right, I don’t know what or who anybody is anymore except for Arturo, Alecto, and Clara and John Baxter. Clara and John are a fine couple and that’s all there is to it. They put an impenetrable barrier of good manners up against some of Olivia’s more insulting inquiries, but didn’t bow their heads to pray when grace was said. As we all sat around that table together, Gerald putting away heavy-duty quantities of turkey and stuffing so he didn’t have to talk, Vivian clearly wanting to show some warmth toward her sister but ending up just squeaking platitudes at her, John attempting to drink away the feeling of being pretty damn unwelcome, Agnes keeping Snow’s left hand prisoner so that the girl had to alternate between use of her knife and use of her fork, as I sat there with that family of mine I reassessed Olivia as a fellow nonswerver. She stood by the decisions she’d taken with Clara because there was nowhere else for her to stand. Clara has a good heart, but goodness is independent from gentleness. Had Olivia exposed a chink in her armor there could’ve been a bloodbath. Quite rightly so, I guess. That old woman treats my Bird as coldly as she can get away with, stopping just short of making Arturo lose his temper. But the sight and sound of her acting out all that hostility . . . I couldn’t sit next to that without wanting to try to shield her somehow. I don’t know, just so she could rest for a moment before picking up her battle-ax again. Olivia was young when she sent Clara away, young and probably so brutal that Gerald thought it was better for the child to grow up in Biloxi than stay home and be stepped on. If that’s what Gerald thought, who’s to say he wasn’t right about that? Olivia had raised Vivian, and there Vivian was, a thirty-eight-year-old attorney-at-law who should have had enough poise to keep her from gaping when her brother-in-law told her some of the things he used to do for youthful kicks. John Baxter used to follow middle-aged white ladies down deserted streets at night, walking faster as they walked faster, slowing down if a witness appeared. He found their fear of him hilarious and sad. One woman begged him to leave her alone and tried to make him take her purse. Another woman turned around, walked toward him, put her hand on his arm, and whispered, “How much?” That took the thrill out of the game, and he stopped playing it. Clara, Arturo, and I were the only ones who laughed at that. Snow said, “Uncle John,” in a tiny, distressed voice. It was pretty effective, the gasp of distress combined with the white dress and the ardent glance and the shadowy hair all loose around her face.
“I don’t get it,” Bird said. I told her I’d explain later, and she answered: “No, you won’t.” She nudged me and pointed her chin in Gerald’s direction. My usually amiable father-in-law had stopped chewing and was just holding his food in his mouth. He looked revolted by John and everything John said. But then Gerald had been eating too much.
“Emmett Till,” he said, suddenly. “Emmett Till did what he did just one time. Livia, what is it he did . . . right, he whistled. He was a Northerner and he didn’t know any better. So he whistled at a Mississippi white woman. She didn’t like that, so fetched her gun. But she didn’t have to use it; she had a husband and a brother-in-law, real men who weren’t afraid to take on a fourteen-year-old boy. You saw what they did to Emmett Till. You saw the boy’s face. Agnes, you cried and said he looked melted—”
(Fourteen years old. So close to Bird’s age. Too close.)
Olivia gave Gerald’s sleeve a brisk tug, to remind him he was in mixed company and that people were trying to eat. He lowered his voice a little: “But you, John Baxter, you know that the men who killed Emmett Till didn’t do a single second of jail time on account of that murder. And you, a Kentucky man yourself, not even a Northerner . . . you say you scared white women for fun. Didn’t you value your life? Didn’t you see that if the authorities didn’t give a damn about you, you had to give that much more of a damn about yourself? I don’t know what you think of me, and I don’t much care, but I’ll thank you not to sit at my table and brag about your stupidity.”
Clara laid her knife and fork down, and placed her hands in her lap. She and John made a painfully obvious point of not looking at each other. They seemed more embarrassed for Gerald than insulted on their own behalves. Arturo said: “Now wait a minute, Dad—” but John shook his head. “Your pa was just speaking his mind. I wasn’t bragging, Mr. Whitman. It didn’t matter too much whether I was deliberately following them or whether I just happened to be going their way, those women would’ve been just as scared regardless, so why not make a joke out of it? I guess I had some form of death wish, and I knew just how little anyone who looks like me has to do to get killed. I saw the face that Emmett Till was left with. I want you to know that I wasn’t bragging.”