Out of Darkness (7 page)

But Wash wasn't thinking about Rosie Lynn anymore, and he wanted to know Naomi more than he wanted to know better.

 

BETO
After school, Beto waited in the woods with Naomi and Cari. Most everybody who was walking to the Humble camp had already gone on. Some of the kids from the revival came toward them in matching dresses. An older girl was with them, someone from Naomi's class named Tommie. When she saw Naomi, she invited the three of them for snacks.

“My ma made some applesauce cake,” Tommie said. “Might be some lemonade, too.”

Beto and Cari tugged on Naomi's sleeves, but she shook her head.

“Maybe another time,” she said, giving them a hard look. “Thanks for the invitation.”

Nobody said anything until the girls were far down the path.

“Could've eaten cake, too, for how long it's taking,” Cari said. “When is Wash coming?” She swatted at her damp curls.

“Don't know,” Naomi said. “If you want, you can fix my braid.”

Cari sighed and rolled her eyes. A moment later, though, she came over behind Naomi, undid her braid, and began to redo it. At home, sometimes Naomi let Beto fix her hair, too, but he couldn't ask for a turn out here.

“Want to know what we learned today?” Cari asked.

“Of course,” Naomi said. She reached out to push a few sweaty strands of hair off Beto's forehead.

Cari said, “I read ‘ACKERMAN, FRANCIS,' ‘ACKERMANN, RUDOLPH,' and ‘ACNE.' Blech, that one was nasty. I sure didn't want to, but I couldn't help finishing it.” Then she named the good entries, sometimes telling whole long passages she knew by heart.

Beto was a good reader, too, but he couldn't remember things the way Cari could. For him it was bits and broad outlines, never the perfect whole.

She was mostly generous with her gift. Like today, when he had wanted to keep the entry on the albatross, she had agreed to read it. All that it took for them to have it forever was for Cari to read it once. Sometimes Cari would tell him bits at night if they were both awake. And during the day, too, if he agreed to give up something in exchange or do her some favor.

Halfway through Cari's recitation of an entry on astrology, Wash came jogging up the path from the direction of the school. “Y'all ready?” he asked. He pulled a wristwatch out of his pocket and checked it. “Sorry I'm late.”

Naomi nodded, and they followed him into the woods.

After ten minutes on the main trail, Wash pointed to a smaller path to one side. “Egypt Town's this way,” he said. The place sounded like magic. Beto and Cari tore down the path because if a place was worth walking to, it was surely worth a run.

“Turn right at the road,” Wash called.

On the road they passed a half dozen brightly painted houses, some tidy and some not, and then they were in front of the only thing that looked like a store. MASONS was painted in big white letters straight onto the shingle siding of the building, and it had a wide front porch with a few homemade rockers. The front door was propped open with a barrel.

Inside, Wash introduced them to Mr. Mason, the owner, who had gentle eyes and shaky hands that reminded Beto of Abuelito. A few stray white hairs stuck out from his chin. He greeted Naomi with a “Good afternoon, miss,” and gave Beto and Cari a broken peppermint stick apiece. Naomi went over her list, and Mr. Mason brought down the items she asked for from his shelves and cabinets. Beto and Cari squatted at the counter, eyeing the big glass jars of candy and figuring on what they could get for the dime Naomi had given them.

Once their candy was picked out and Mr. Mason had scooped it into a paper bag, Wash led them back out onto the porch so that Naomi could finish her shopping. They played a while and sucked on their candy until they were down to just one piece of red licorice. Beto wanted to be sure Naomi got some, so he darted back through the open doorway to give it to her. Mr. Mason was talking to Naomi somewhere in the back part of the store.

“...good people here in Egypt, but maybe you should think about shopping elsewhere.”

“Mr. Turner didn't want me in his store. I'd have to go clear to Overton, almost five miles,” Naomi said.

“You're sort of ... in between. You keep comin' here, that's fine. But see to it that you don't get too familiar with ... folks.” Mr. Mason walked over to the counter then, and when he saw Beto, his face seemed to change, to go stiff somehow, and he smiled. “Got one more scrap of peppermint if you want it.”

“Please,” Naomi said, “save some for other children. They already had plenty.”

Mr. Mason nodded slowly, and then after counting and recounting, he reached across the counter and dropped some coins into Naomi's hand. “There's always someone looking to make talk.” He spoke softly, but Beto still heard.

 

THE GANG
Most of us couldn't like the Mexican girl on account of Miranda not liking her, which made it downright dangerous, socially speaking. But Tommie Kinnebrew was near evangelical on the subject and spent half her talk trying to win us over. Mary Ellis said that the Mexican girl went to Tommie's church, which was why she was obliged to like her.

We would be sitting at lunch in the cafeteria or eating under one of Mr. Crane's big trees that only the seniors were allowed to use, and Tommie would barge in and force some dull story down our throats about how the Mexican girl was such a hard worker. She let some interesting facts slip along the way, though. She told us how the girl didn't have a mama, poor thing, and also didn't know how to do her wash. She'd learned that tidbit from Muff Clarkson, also a member of the New London Baptist Church. Muff stopped by to bring the girl's family a cake and found her up to her elbows in laundry—in the bathtub of all places. How come? The true-fact answer was that she didn't know how to use a crank wash machine since she was poor as all get-out, and we reasoned that she had not even lived in a real house but had slept with horses or pigs back in some nasty corner of San Antonio, a town we knew to be full of dirty Mexicans. According to Tommie, when Muff told her that she'd never get that red clay out by slopping things around in the tub, the Mexican girl burst into tears.

Tommie's stories weren't much, but they gave us material for working up something better. The boys among us liked to think on how the Mexican girl surely got wet doing the laundry. Word was that she didn't wear a slip; just a splash of water and you'd see damn near everything. The girls among us focused on the obvious fact that a Mexican girl who didn't know how to do laundry had to be just about the most unsanitary creature on earth. That was proof that Mexicans were filthy, they said. You might get a disease just by standing near this one, and you surely did not want to share a sewing machine with her in home economics. The girls on the homecoming committee said, “See?” The boys on the football team shrugged and grinned. In the locker room during the second week of football practice, Forrest Evers said that he'd gone all the way with her out back of the cafeteria. We didn't believe him, but we liked the thought of it.

There were other questions, too, like what the relation was between her and the little white kids that she watched and also between her and her “daddy,” who plain as day was not her daddy. A few of us decided that she wasn't a Mexican at all since the little kids weren't brown. The explanation was that her mama was white but there'd been a nigger in the wood stack, which was where the girl's color came from. That story was told mostly by those who thought she shouldn't be in our school but instead ought to be out learning with the coloreds, but there was pushback from folks who insisted that she was a Mexican and that it was hardly fair to make a Mexican go to the darkie school.

Besides, we didn't want to lose her. She was the only pretty thing that every boy among us believed could be his, at least ten minutes at a time. Without her, we'd have nothing to talk about but football, Miranda's new charm bracelet ordered from Dallas, Chigger Watson jacking off in the woods, and who was finishing the year out and who was going to get married or go work the rigs. Without the Mexican girl, the only stories we'd get from Tommie Kinnebrew would be about Oklahoma and the last oil field her daddy worked and how they had to share a one-room garage with another family. “Didn't have nothing to separate our smells and sounds except for a big blanket tacked up in the middle,” she told us more times than we wanted, which was none.

We needed the Mexican girl, each in our own way. She gave us something to do. She kept us thinking. How to get rid of her (Miranda); how to stay clear of her (the other girls); how to get in her (the boys).

 

NAOMI
Naomi started when the screen door swung open. She looked down. Her hands were drifting in the gray dishwater, long gone cold. She could not say when she had finished the dishes.

“Daydreaming?” Henry said.

“Just cleaning up. I didn't hear you come in,” she said. She pulled the stopper. “Kids are asleep. There's fried ham and beans. Potatoes and creamed corn. I can warm it for you.” She uncovered his plate.

He tossed his hat onto the counter. “Don't bother. I'll eat it cold.” He rolled up his sleeves and began to lather up with the bar of Lava soap.

“Where'd that come from?” he asked, pointing a soapy finger at a small boat Wash had made for the twins. One of them must have left it there when they washed up for dinner.

“Oh, the kids made a friend.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

“Colored boy?” he asked over his shoulder.

“That's right,” she answered. She laid a fork and a napkin on the table.

“Bud said something to me about seeing a Negro boy pass by.” Henry ducked down and splashed a little water on his face then rubbed himself dry with a dish towel. She made a mental note to put that one in the laundry bin at the first opportunity. “Seems like they ought to be making friends with kids at their school.”

“They are,” she said. “Kids from church, too. I saw Cari eating lunch with Cassie and Janey Horton today, and Beto was playing football with some boys.”

“That's good. Better for them to stick to their own kind. Not that I've got anything against coloreds.”

She might have said “yes, sir,” and left it at that. But then she thought of what Wash had given her. Not just a way to get the groceries but also relief, warmth. That afternoon on the way home from the store: light angling through the trees, cicadas clattering high in the branches, the twins racing and laughing with Wash, her not needing to say anything. She felt the worth of it, and a bit of boldness sprouted up in her.

“It's a big help to me, the time they spend with him. That boy, I mean. He's called Wash, I think. They look forward to it, get their chores done quick so they can go off.”

“I don't want them working,” Henry said, crossing his arms. “They should be learning their lessons and playing.”

“Not work, really. Small things to help,” she said. “It takes a lot to run a household.”

He stretched. His joints popped as he flexed his fingers, and he rolled his head from side to side till his neck cracked. “They're just kids.”

“I need the help, Daddy.” She forced out the last word.

“Not too much, is all. I work so they don't have to.”

“Of course,” she said. She set his food down in front of him.

As she did, Henry threw his head back and laughed. “This joke I heard today on the rig...”

“Well?” she said finally. He seemed to want her to ask.

“Can't repeat it—not fit for a lady's ears. Not fit for Christian ears, neither. Pastor Tom would swallow his tongue if he could hear them boys talking trash on the rig.”

Naomi poured him a glass of milk. “Anything else?” she asked as she set it in front of him.

Henry grew serious. “Pray with me, Naomi.”

Before she could answer, he had snatched up her hand. And so she stood there, unable to hear his words so long as he was gripping her fingers. She forced out an “amen” and then jerked her hand back.

“Good night,” she said. She all but ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She washed and washed her hands. When she came out, she told herself she was not going to look at him, but she did anyway.

Henry was smiling. Whatever the oil field crud and filth on the rest of him, his arms and face and hands were scrubbed and clean. For a moment, she could see what the church ladies saw: young, handsome, hardworking, strong. He had the wholesome look of the redeemed. But she had not forgotten. Could not forget.

Back in the bedroom, she made sure the twins were asleep, and then she reached under the bed, found her mother's old guitar case, and carefully flipped open the snaps. She touched the things inside one by one.

◊ ◊ ◊

“Naomi? Are you awake?” Cari's voice came in a whisper.

Naomi bolted upright. Cari's side of the bed was empty. She felt a moment of panic but then saw her sitting cross-legged on the bare hardwood floor.

“
¿Qué pasó?
” Naomi asked.

“It's raining,” Cari said. She pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them tight. The old nightgown tented over her, bluish in the weak light.

Naomi listened. There was a faint patter on the roof, and droplets slid down the window over their bed. On the other side of the room, Beto was still asleep. His bottom was lifted in the air, a habit he'd had as a baby and that still came back sometimes when he was very tired.

“Why are you on the floor?” Naomi asked.

“It's not coming in,” Cari said.

Then Naomi understood. In San Antonio, rainstorms were rare, and if one hit at night, you woke up with water dripping on your face. Then there was a mad scramble to shift furniture and get pans and bowls and buckets in all the places where the roof leaked.