Virginia Hamilton Page 12

  Mrs. Douglass stared at her son. “What do you mean, you don’t know what she does? You’re supposed to keep an eye on her. You and Thomas both!” She felt anger flare.

  Levi stood there, tongue-tied.

  “You’re supposed to tell her to come home at a certain time,” she said. “You don’t let her run around at will, she’s too young.”

  “We keep an eye on her, me and Thomas both,” Levi said. “I thought you knew she went over to Mrs. Jefferson’s. That’s why I never mentioned it.”

  “Well.” She stood, absently rubbing her shoulders. “No, I didn’t know that,” she said. “Leona’s a bit different, keeping to herself the way she does.”

  “Not just different,” Levi said. “The kids all think she’s kinda crazy, like a fortune-teller, or something. Thomas thinks so, too.”

  “Does he, now?” she said. She eyed Levi as he turned, shifted his weight until he had turned his profile to her. “And what do you think?” she asked him.

  “Me … Me?” he said.

  “Please look at me when I’m talking to you,” she said.

  Again he shifted against the counter, facing her. Then he stood straight, as was Levi’s formal way.

  “I asked you what you thought about Justice visiting Mrs. Jefferson.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Levi said. “Nothing. I mean,” he said, “I didn’t think anything about it because I thought you knew she went down there.”

  “Well,” she said again, “for your information and for Thomas’, I didn’t know, but I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with her visiting Mrs. Jefferson. We had a conversation, Ticey and I did, about difference not too long ago.” She gave Levi a searching look. “We talked about you boys, how you are so much alike but also so different.”

  Levi ran his hand across his forehead, closing his eyes and frowning as he did so.

  “Your head hurts you?” Mrs. Douglass asked.

  “A little bit. Around my left eye. When I get a headache, it’s usually a pain in my left eye.”

  “That sounds like sinus,” she said. “Or maybe we should have your eyes tested.”

  “Aw, it’s probably nothing. It comes and goes.” The pain seared him, exploding behind his eye. Levi had one thought. He must try to make his mother stop Ticey from visiting Mrs. Jefferson.

  He began, “If Dorian’s mom is some kind of fortune-teller, maybe she will influence Ticey with all that what’s-your-sign stuff and palm-reading. Ticey is awful young. She might take it all to heart and give herself nightmares.”

  “Oh, now, she’s a very down-to-earth child,” Mrs. Douglass said firmly. “I’m sure she visits Leona because I’m not around. So she takes the next best mom she can find.” She paused, feeling a twinge of guilt. “I’ll talk to Ticey, but I’m sure it’s all right. Leona may be different, but she’s not crazy, Tom-Tom.”

  Calling Levi, Tom-Tom. It was a slip of the tongue, the harmless way a parent will forget and call one of her children by the other’s name.

  But Levi’s face went pale with shock when his mother called him Tom-Tom. For an instant, his eyes ran with fear.

  “Lee, I mean,” Mrs. Douglass corrected her-self. Her voice trailed off as the smugness of Thomas appeared in Lee’s expression.

  Mrs. Douglass’ mouth gaped open. “Thomas!” she whispered.

  “What? … Mom?” Levi said. A calm and relaxed set to his face, which now showed concern.”Mom?” With a questioning smile, he said, “Just then you called me Thomas.”

  “Well, for a moment I thought … I was sure I saw—

  “Oooh. Ouch!” Levi clutched his brow in an exaggerated show of pain. “Do we have any aspirin? Maybe I do have some sinus.”

  At once, his mom was full of sympathy. “I don’t wonder, with all of the dryness and heat day after day—all of the pollen, the ragweed growing like trees. Maybe it’s hay fever. Did you wake up with it?” She went to a cupboard for aspirin.

  “Yes. It could be that I slept too hard,” he said.

  “You boys stay up too late. I’ve been lax about that. Why is it that, soon as summer comes, the rules fly out the window?”

  “We have to have some fun,” Levi told her. “We don’t go hanging around the streets—aren’t you glad of that?”

  “But you do smoke cigarettes right in this house, don’t you?” She had caught him by surprise. He hung his head.

  “I want it stopped,” she told him. “Now that you’ve tried it, you can quit it, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  “And tell Thomas. I’m not going to make a big thing out of it and tell your father, but I want it stopped. Next thing you know, Ticey will be trying it.”

  “Okay,” he said again.

  There wasn’t much talking between them after that. Levi swallowed milk with his aspirin. He prepared the table for the evening meal in the dining room, where they always had supper. When he finished, he was free to slip back to his room. Gently, he closed the door behind him.

  Thomas took the handkerchief from his back pocket. He let memory free.

  You did pretty good, he told Levi.

  Thanks, traced Levi glumly. Once again, he was aware of bars surrounding him and the dank odor of his tiny cell. Let me out now, please.

  Just hold on, Thomas traced. You didn’t do all that well. You didn’t get Mom to come down hard on Ticey for going over to the Jeffersons’.

  It’s not my fault Mom didn’t see anything wrong with her going over there. She said—.

  I know what she said, Thomas traced. I happened to be listening. And you’ll stay right where you are for not being more convincing.

  Levi gripped the bars with all of his might. It’s only an illusion, he told himself. There aren’t any bars. Thomas is just making it up.

  But there were bars, that was the horror of it. He could actually see and feel them. There was a cell. Levi was of so little strength he could not break out of Thomas’ imagination. He bowed his head, feeling desperately alone.

  Somewhere there was a sound. Out there, beyond the bars where Thomas’ murky presence waited and tormented Levi, the slightest of flutterings. It was a gentle, delicate movement coming to rest, and it was watching.

  What—? said Thomas. Levi could sense him searching the dark. Who’s there!

  Levi blinked out into the deep shadows beyond the cell. He saw nothing, but he felt a watching; there was no other way to describe it. Whatever it was was not possible, coming as it did from out of nowhere rather than from Thomas. And he had the impression that Thomas was terrified by it.

  Thomas crouched, shielding his head. Oooh, get away! Whatever watched made him feel uncomfortably warm. Soon, he was burning hot and he could feel his skin tanning, burning, right there in the darkness of Levi’s mind.

  Levi could hear Thomas yelling at whatever was watching. Then the bars he held on to dissolved. His tiny cell melted away. Levi stood quaking as the image of himself quaking dwindled.

  I’m free!

  He found himself on that utterly strange voyage through the narrow, empty passage between Thomas’ self and his own. In the passage, his mind was timeless, flowing through a stream of bright nothing. At the last moment, he pulled back in shock. It was Thomas’ mind flowing away, not his own. But he had almost mixed his own with his brother’s!

  Levi came to himself in his room. He had his own mind and he laughed hysterically, his breath exploding in great surges of relief. He grabbed his arms, felt his face, to make certain he was really he and in control of himself. He hugged himself, rocking slowly from side to side.

  He fell to trembling, suddenly, remembering how terrible his brother had been to him. Yet he was free for the moment. What had freed him? he wondered. What had been there, so powerful in its watching?

  But he knew beyond a doubt that he was trapped forever at Thomas’ mercy.

  Justice lay deep asleep. No longer was she curled in a ball like a soft, sweet kitten. She lay stiff and unnaturally still. Not
a breath appeared to escape her lips. Her hands were knotted into fists and her arms were like petrified sticks crossed over her chest.

  Minutes ago, her eyes had come wide open. There was no telling whether she was alert behind them, for they held nothing of her feeling or expression. But there was something ever so clear shining watchful from them.

  Behind her open eyes, she lay dreaming. She observed through space and unimaginable places. She saw from the kitchen to Thomas’ and Levi’s room; then outside, where Thomas now crouched on that side of the house near the room.

  Thomas tried to hide himself from what his senses recognized as something alert and watching in the sunlight. He felt it probe at him and deftly warn him that he could not hide.

  The Watcher took its time retreating. It faded, finally, and Justice’s dreaming submitted to the dark. Her eyes fluttered closed; her body relaxed all at once. So powerful was the loosening of muscles at the same time that she awakened with a start. She stretched, yawned, staring around her. Again she curled comfortably about herself, unwilling to give up her ease for at least another half-hour.

  Justice wouldn’t wake up again until her mother called her to supper. She was at rest, with nothing on her mind.

  8

  “YOU SEEN HIM?”

  “No, I haven’t seen him.”

  “You seen Tom-Tom?”

  “I wasn’t even lookin’ for him!”

  “Yes, you were!”

  “No, I wasn’t! Maybe he’s already gone.”

  “He hasn’t gone, I would of seen him.”

  “Maybe he left before you were up and out here.”

  “I been out here since six-thirty!”

  “Awwh, you haven’t either!”

  It was Friday morning. And Thursday evening they none of them had gone to the field after supper. They’d known that Tom-Tom wouldn’t want them to. So they had gone to bed early in order to get a good start on Friday.

  Since seven, boys had been shooting out of driveways and plunging up and down Dayton Street on their bikes, past the Union Road.

  “I think he’s already gone. I haven’t seen a soul from up there all morning.”

  “Maybe because it’s too early for them to be up, dummy.”

  “I think I saw Mr. Douglass go.”

  “You think.”

  “I know I saw him, around six-thirty.”

  “I think I saw him, too. Yeah. I know I did. Had to be him.”

  “But nobody else’s come out.”

  “Think we oughta go up and check?”

  “Up the field?”

  “Around Union, on our bikes. Just ride up the driveway and see if their bikes—”

  “Awm not goin’ up there.”

  “Why not?”

  “S’bad enough goin’ up the field.”

  “What er you talking about!”

  “You know. They’re twins and all.”

  “They’re identicals, my mom says Mrs. Douglass says is better than calling them twins. Because nothing they do is the same thing. Twins is a non-word, my mom says Mrs. Douglass says. Says what they are is identicals. Anyway, I’ve known them for as long as they been here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And they’re just like anybody. One’s smart in books and the other is smart-ass, my mom and dad says.”

  Laughter from the boys. Snickering.

  “Well, they do!”

  “We believe you. We believe you!”

  “Tom-Tom ain’t dumb.”

  “Well, I know that. He ain’t smart, either.”

  “But he can sure play those drums.”

  “Bet he can play anything—hey, you remember the time they let us try all the horns and things to see if we wanted to play anything? You remember Tom-Tom picking them up and playing them? I mean, playing them like he’d been practicing them. The teacher said, ‘Tom Douglass, who’s your private teacher?’ And Tom-Tom just shook his head.”

  “I don’t remember nothing like that, and I was there.”

  “Well, it’s true, I was there, too!”

  “I believe you. I believe you. Calm down! You want folks to notice what we are doing?”

  There were an unusual number of boys and bikes riding around at such an early hour. Folks hurrying off to work didn’t pay much attention. It was summer and kids were going to be around the streets. It would be two months before even the boys thought about school and the long snowtime of winter.

  “You think he’s taken off on us just to get the best snakes first?”

  “I know one way to find out.”

  The three worriers spun out of the group at the corner of Union and Dayton. In sixty seconds, they had sped clear across town and over the treacherous Morrey route to race down the Quinella Road. They made it, oblivious to traffic in this early morning.

  The boys rode expertly down. In no time, they were in the field beside the road, running through high weeds and searching along the black waters of the Quinella Trace. They did not find Tom-Tom.

  “What am I doing out here?”

  “It was your idea.”

  “Because you said he was down here.”

  “I never said he was down here!”

  “Yes, you did, too!”

  “No, I said he was maybe down here.”

  “You said he was down here. And like a fool, I listened. Man, I bet he ain’t even up yet.”

  They were in a sweat now. One of them noticed that, although sunny up above, the day was swathed in ground fog down here. Misty, it was damp, like the tropics, with steam trapped under the great shade trees.

  “Let’s get on outta here.”

  “Let me catch my breath.”

  “Stay down here, standing still too long and you catch some snakebite.”

  “And without Tom-Tom around to take care of it.”

  “Sure. Now he can fix a snakebite.”

  “Sure. I know a kid in Eighth Grade says he was bit down here by something big and long. It wasn’t any kind of garter snake, neither. And Tom-Tom come along, says, ‘Let me see where you was bit.’ And the kid shows him. There it was on the leg, you could see the puncture marks, so the kid said. Tom-Tom looks at the bite real queer for a long look. Then he drops the kid’s pants leg and says, ‘Why, look at all them crows up the tree!’ The kid goes and looks at the crows. He says there was a whole lot of them, real funny the way they was all there in one tree. When he turns back again, Tom-Tom is way off, running away. Looking back over his shoulder at the kid. The kid heads on home from there and doesn’t think about the snakebite until he’s about halfway up the Quinella Road. He remembers he was bit. ‘I was bit! Oh, me, am I gunna die? I was bit!’ And falls off his bike, and sits down right there on the side of the road. And starts cryin’, too scared yet to roll up his pants leg again and look at the bite. He’s sure he’s dying, and he’s heaving and blubbering and feels faint because he’d been pedalin’ the bike so hard and it’s real hot out; but he don’t think of that for a reason at all.”

  “I can feel like fainting any time coming up that hill on a hot day.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So he’s sittin’ there, bawling like a baby and a good thing it’s the middle of the day and no cars. Somebody’d sure see him and go back and tell his folks.”

  “Ain’t it funny how someone you know always sees ya when ya don’t want even a stranger to see ya?”

  “Because you are doin’ what you have no business.”

  “So a half-hour passes. The kid can breathe easier and he stops his crying. He ain’t dead yet. And he gets up his courage. He rolls up his pants leg real slow and careful, like he’s rolling up a million dollars in tens—either of you ever own a ten?”

  The two stay quiet a moment. Glumly, one looks away.

  Finally, the other says, “When I had me a paper route. This guy comes out with an arm in a sling and digging in his jeans to pay me for the month. He pulls out this bill. I take it. I think it’s a one. He says, ‘You got chang
e for that?’ I look at it and it’s a ten. ‘Nope,’ I says back at him. I’m holding that ten and feeling how it feels in muh hand. Then I get this strong whiff of the dude. Man, he’s drunk! And near out of it. And the bandages look brand new, like he ran into a tree only an hour ago, or just a little while ago rolled down the front steps. Anyway. He can’t keep his eyes steady good. So I says real careful, ‘Mister, I ain’t got the change.’ And he says, ‘Well, what in hell I owe ya?’ And I says, pulling out my book—and before I can even say, he says, ‘Seven-fifty, wunnit?’ My mouth falls open, but I clamp it shut again real fast. And I don’t say nothing. And he says, ‘Well, hell, I ain’t got nothin’ smaller, so keep the change.’ And I kept it all. Got me a sweet ol’ ten-dollar bill.”

  They are silent. The one that is the leader of the three moves away from the Quinella Trace back across the open field of high weeds. The other two follow, and mist encloses all of them and trails behind them as they hurry though the gray air.

  The leader speaks. “This kid I was talking about finishes rolling up his pants leg. He must’ve rolled up the wrong one because there ain’t a mark on his right leg, which he was sure was the one was bit. So, quick this time, he rolls up the left leg, taking it easy and careful when he gets near where he thinks the bite is. But there ain’t a bite on that leg, either. He stares at both legs, and whatever was there sure ain’t there anymore. And he looks hard. But not even a twinge.”

  “Ahwh!” The two boys laugh. The leader is proud at how good the story still sounds. Proud that he didn’t forget any of it; it’s not the easiest thing for him to tell something with no mistake all the way through. He believes the story without going deeper. Not to say that he believes Tom-Tom can heal a snakebite wound. But he tells the story because Tom-Tom is in it and he enjoys the sound of the telling.

  They reclaim their bikes beside the road and head back up the winding Quinella.

  “Once I seen Tom-Tom and his brother—” one of them says.

  “Lee,” the leader tells him.

  “No, but that’s not his whole name.”

  “Levi,” the third one says promptly.

  “Yeah. I see him and Levi coming home from school. Levi’s arms were full of books. He carried everything for his brother, including that plastic water bottle all them soccer players use. And before Tom-Tom gave up most all sports for drumming.