The House You Pass on the Way (4 page)

THAT NIGHT, as they sat watching film clips of the grandparents, Staggerlee couldn’t get her mind off Tyler—wondering what it’d be like to have her in the house. In the blue-gray light of the television, the family looked strange and beautiful. Charlie Horse was sitting across from her with Battle halfway asleep on his lap. Her parents were on the couch, Daddy’s arm around Mama’s shoulder. Staggerlee pressed her face into Creek’s head. He smelled of grass and river. Dotti was lying on her back, close up on the television, her hair spread out like some curly fan above her head.

“Here comes the part when Papa sings your song, Stag,” her father said.

On the screen, their grandfather was doing a slow soft-shoe. When he started singing, his voice was raspy and soft as a whisper.

It had taken Staggerlee years of listening to that song to understand it.

“Everyone said Staggerlee was a bad, bad cat,” Daddy said. “But listen to that song. My daddy had a whole different take on him.”

On the screen, her grandfather’s face broke into the same grin as Daddy’s, and Staggerlee watched him, watched him slide across the stage, doing fancy spins, then breaking into a high-stomping tap.

The legend had it that Staggerlee had shot a man for a five-dollar hat and went on to be known as the most evil man alive. Staggerlee squinted at the television, listening to her grandfather and the story inside the story. It wasn’t about murder at all—it was about someone struggling to break out of all the gates life had built up around them. She was nine when the words started making sense. Nine when she changed her name. And although it had taken the family a while to get used to it, they did. Sometimes, when her mother was angry or tired, she slipped back to Evangeline. But Staggerlee wouldn’t answer to it. At school she insisted on being called Staggerlee.

“If they’d only done one more show,” Dotti said, turning away from the screen.

It was the last show their grandparents had done before they died. The film clips were grainy—black-and-white images that had that long, long time ago look about them.

Staggerlee’s grandparents had been on their way out the door to the demonstration for an all-boy school in Monroeville, Alabama, that refused to integrate when someone from
The Ed Sullivan Show
called.

“The response to the last show had been so overwhelming,” her father said to Dotti. Again and again he’d told this story. Staggerlee stared at the TV screen. Maybe she’d heard it a dozen times. Maybe a hundred. If her father told it enough, she wondered, did he think he could change the ending?

“They wanted them to come back to New York to do another show,” her father was saying. “Would fly them out that evening and have them home by the next day if they needed to be. But you see, they were already committed to this demonstration. Hallique was living here at home then—going to college nearby in Bakersville. I was already in New York. She sat there listening to them go back and forth about it. Said she was mad. Had a basketball game that night and wanted them to be there. She was playing college ball—one of the first black women on the team. Hallique told me that Mama and Daddy were standing in the kitchen trying to decide between Ed Sullivan and Monroeville and she was sitting at the table dressed in her basketball uniform hoping they’d just forget both things and come watch her play.” He got quiet for a moment. When he started speaking again, his voice was softer. Staggerlee leaned back against his legs. He stroked her head as he spoke.

“By this time, they were well known. They knew their appearance at a demonstration meant a lot to the press. And this was supposed to be a big one, with news crews and national papers coming—three gospel choirs from churches as far-off as Berkeley, California. Even the Vice President talked about showing.”

Her father got quiet again. He always got quiet at this point. It was too hard for him to say—the part about the bombing. Hallique had gone to her game that night and was on her way home when two men ran up and asked if she was Hallique Canan. Staggerlee pressed her cheek against Daddy’s knee. Mama had told them this part—about how the men had told Hallique about the bombing, about her parents dying. Staggerlee had never heard her father say it—say the words—that his parents had died that night.

“Hallique said they won their game that night,” her father said softly.

STAGGERLEE SAT WATCHING that same film clip over and over, long after everyone else had gone to bed. Her grandmother’s voice rose up sweet and high as she sang “I Wonder As I Wander.” Staggerlee sat there wondering if her grandparents had found a home somewhere, a place where there was nothing left to fight against. She watched their grainy faces smiling into the camera and wondered how long they’d all be wandering.

NEWS TRAVELED QUICKLY THROUGH SWEET GUM. That spring, Staggerlee heard that Hazel was leaving, that her family was moving the first of the month. In school they had hardly spoken. Some mornings, as they passed in the halls, Staggerlee would absently press her fingers to her lips. She wondered, now, as she sat on her porch, if Hazel had forgotten that afternoon in the cornflowers. And if she had, what thoughts, what friendships had replaced the memory? Staggerlee stared out at the sun setting bright orange beyond the fields. Tall stalks of corn swayed slowly, and their shadows, casting out over the land, filled Staggerlee with a sadness she couldn’t name. She was waiting for Hazel. Even though they hadn’t spoken in a long time, she was hoping Hazel would come by before she moved. To say good-bye. To say that she remembered.

Early in the evening, Staggerlee’s father returned from work and sat with her.

“You look like you’re waiting for someone,” he said, smiling.

Staggerlee shook her head.

“I used to sit like this,” Daddy said softly. “After my parents died, I’d just sit on this porch waiting for them to come on home. Ida and Hallique’d be inside and I’d be sitting here. On these stairs.”

“But you knew they weren’t coming home.”

“That didn’t stop me from waiting for them. I wasn’t much more than a boy. Probably still believed that if you wished hard enough you could make the impossible happen.” He took his pipe from his back pocket, put it in his mouth, and struck a match to it. Cherry-scented smoke circled them.

“You never met my friend Hazel,” Staggerlee said.

Daddy squinted as though he were thinking. “I never met any of your friends and you know it.” He winked at her.

Staggerlee smiled, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. At first her parents had worried about her social life. But a long time ago, she had convinced them that her harmonica and Creek were enough. That she didn’t need a roomful of friends, like Dotti.

“Hazel’s the only one, really,” she said. “I mean she used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“She’s moving. Her daddy took a job down in Florida. I was thinking she’d come by to say good-bye.”

Her father looked thoughtful for a moment. They sat for a while without saying anything.

“Sometimes people don’t get a chance to say good-bye, Stag.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him.

“I’m always gonna take the time,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

“That’s good. Always take the time. You really never know when you’re not going to have it anymore.” He stuck his pipe back in his mouth and puffed on it. They sat quietly, staring out at the fields. Staggerlee glanced toward the road.

“Charlie Horse got a letter today,” she said. “A place for him to study piano opened up at that music camp. He’ll be leaving by the end of the week.”

“That so,” Daddy said, frowning.

Staggerlee nodded. All winter Charlie Horse had been waiting for this letter—a full ride to one of the country’s most prestigious music camps. He’d start college straight from there. They probably wouldn’t see him again until Thanksgiving. Staggerlee swallowed. First Hazel, now Charlie Horse. Seemed like this town, their house, was all just something you passed on the way.

“Why’d you come back to this house, Daddy?” It was getting dark quickly now, and around them, katydids were starting to call out. Inside, she could hear her mother and Charlie Horse getting dinner ready.

Her father took a long drag on his pipe. “I always knew I’d come back here. This house gets in your blood. I sit on the stairs sometimes and remember Mama on her hands and knees polishing those floors, remember my father outside high up on the ladder laying down shingles. Some mornings I wake up and she’s right in that kitchen taking a pan of biscuits from the stove.”

He got quiet for a moment.

“They left this world,” he said softly. “But they never left this house. I had to come back to them.”

“You think Charlie Horse’ll come back here?”

“A couple of times probably. The way you and Dotti will after you’re gone. I don’t expect any of you to settle here the way I needed to.”

Staggerlee stared out at the road, knowing, all at once, that Hazel wasn’t coming, that they had said their good-bye that morning in the school yard over two years ago.

She leaned against Daddy’s shoulder in the darkness and listened to the river rush past.

SCHOOL ENDED ON A THURSDAY AT THE END OF MAY. All the eighth-graders were headed for Sweet Gum High come September, and the girls dressed up that last day in ankle-length dresses and high heels.
Maybe they’re practicing for high school,
Staggerlee thought, sitting at the top of the school stairs watching them,
trying to make themselves feel older, grown-up already.

Precarious.
That was the word that kept coming to mind. The night before, her mother had said it about Battle—that he seemed so precarious when he ran. And now, watching these girls make their way to the school buses and waiting cars, Mama’s word for Battle kept popping into her head. They seemed scared too and unsure of themselves behind the thick mascara and painted-on lips.

Staggerlee pulled her sweatshirt away from her chest and blew down into it. It was an old Columbia shirt that had once belonged to her father. He had gone there for two years before dropping out to learn to fly planes. He had a small airport down in Anderson, taking people down to and back from the Sea Islands. Her mother had gone to Mount Holyoke, and more than once she had told them she’d be proud if Staggerlee or Dotti followed in her footsteps. Staggerlee had pulled the sweatshirt on this morning without thinking about how hot she’d be in it. And now, as the sun beat down on her, she pushed the sleeves up past her elbows and squinted into the crowds. She looked so different from everyone. Her clothes, the thick-soled hiking boots, her hair. And she felt different too—off-step somehow, on the outside. What did it sound like, Staggerlee wondered, having someone call your name across a crowded school yard? How did it feel to turn to the sound of your name, to see some smiling face or waving hand and know it was for you and you alone?

Staggerlee watched the students piling onto the school buses. She would walk home today—six miles. Maybe she’d run into her mother and Battle along the way, coming from shopping in town. Yes, that would be nice, to steal up behind them and wrap her arms around Mama’s waist. To see Mama turn, then smile and hug her. To see Battle laughing with surprise.

The stairs were almost empty. Staggerlee took her harmonica from her pocket and started blowing.

Charlie Horse was gone now. He had hugged her hard the morning he left and promised to write. It hadn’t seemed real that day, his leaving. As Staggerlee stood on the porch watching him and Daddy drive off, she waved absently, a part of her believing he’d be back in a day or two. But now it was starting to settle in. The house felt emptier without him. Some mornings, she ran her fingers along the piano wishing he were there playing. When she plucked at the keys, they echoed through the house and faded. It felt as if the house itself were missing Charlie Horse.

When the last school bus drove off, Staggerlee looked around her.

Tyler would arrive next Thursday, and Staggerlee and Daddy would pick her up in Tudor—a small town about fifty miles north of Sweet Gum.