Burrows Page 4

  Instead of leaving right away, Grandpa went back outside to stand in the yard and watch the empty highway.

  We followed him and fooled around in the yard while he talked to himself. Miss Becky puttered around in the kitchen, waiting, because she knew he needed to work through whatever was on his mind until he was ready to go. We’ve always called our grandmother Miss Becky, because that’s how Grandpa always talked about her. As usual, she hadn’t asked him one single question about what he’d been doing.

  He finally came back to the porch. “What are y’all waiting on?” He called to Miss Becky through the kitchen’s screen door. “C’mon, Mama. It’s getting late.”

  She picked up her purse and came outside without a word, like she’d been the one holding us up. I’d already put Hootie in the corn crib so he wouldn’t try and follow us to town. Pepper and I climbed into the back seat and Grandpa had the car backing up before the motor smoothed out.

  Pepper leaned over the seat. “Grandpa, can we listen to the radio? They might be playing a new Beatles or Rolling Stones song.”

  “Naw, we ain’t listening to any of that noise from them long-haired pukes.” He dialed the radio for a moment and bluegrass came out of the one speaker on the dash. “That there’s Bill Monroe with that new kid Del McCoury playing with him. Now that’s music.”

  Miss Becky put an end to any further arguments when she put her hand on Grandpa’s shoulder and turned around to face us. She almost caught Pepper sticking her tongue out at Grandpa’s back. “Why don’t you read one of them comic books like Top until we get there?”

  Pepper swelled up and grabbed one of my Rawhide Kid comics from between us. When Miss Becky turned back around, she held it in front of her face. “Shit.” She peeked over the top to see if Miss Becky heard her whisper.

  I stifled a giggle. After the song, we heard a Pepsodent commercial that stuck in my mind until we parked beside the courthouse, half an hour later.

  You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

  We slammed doors and gathered beside the statue of a Confederate soldier.

  Miss Becky checked her purse for a list. “I need to go to Woolworth’s to get some thread while y’all are in there with O.C. I’m going by Duke and Ayers, too.”

  Grandpa seemed to barely pay attention to her because he had something on his mind. “You take Pepper with you. Top and I have business inside.”

  The frown Miss Becky gave Grandpa told me she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she never argued with him in front of us kids. “That’ll be all right.” She reached back in her purse and handed me the new puffer I always carried for my asthma. “I heard you wheezing. Take a dose of this before y’all go in.”

  I was always wheezing because my asthma was so bad, so I squeezed the bulb, and inhaled the atomized medicine. My lungs immediately itched deep down inside for a moment and I breathed easier. I hung it out of my back pocket.

  “Let’s go.” Grandpa turned and led the way without another word. I threw Pepper a grin as they followed the sidewalk toward the town square. She stuck her tongue out at me. Miss Becky saw it and was giving her a good talking to about acting like a lady as Grandpa and I climbed the granite courthouse steps. For a kid, the tall arches over the front doors almost reached to the sky.

  Our footsteps echoed in the tiled foyer on the way to the elevator. The place always smelled like bleach and mothballs. I followed Grandpa, even though I’d been there many times before. He never turned around to see if I was behind him, but he knew I wouldn’t get too far. I saw the wall-mounted water fountain and like any kid, it made me want a drink, even though I wasn’t thirsty.

  I trotted across the tiny black and white tiles. I’d turned the handle to sip from the stream of water when a hand grabbed the back of my collar and jerked me nearly off my feet.

  Surprised, I gave a yelp.

  “Shhh,” Grandpa said almost in a whisper, letting go of my shirt. He pointed toward another fountain five feet away. “You don’t use this one. We use that’un there.”

  They were exactly alike, and I couldn’t figure out what he meant. Then I saw the “Colored Only” sign over the fountain.

  “What’s the difference?” Water was water.

  He ignored the question. “Get you a drink over there if you’re thirsty and let’s go.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t, but that’s how it is right now.”

  The idea sounded ridiculous to me. We all drank from the same dipper out of the water bucket back home. Separate water fountains for colored and white people didn’t make sense, but grownups had funny ideas about things.

  “Where do the Indians get a drink?” I asked.

  For a second Grandpa had a strange expression on his face, like he he’d never thought of that question. It was a surprise, because Miss Becky was Choctaw. “I reckon they can…. hurry up and come on.” I changed fountains and followed him to the elevator where the old Negro man opened the safety gate and gave us a big smile.

  “Mornin’, Mister Ned.”

  “Morning, Jules. How you feeling today?”

  “Tolerble well. Bless you for askin’. Who’s that you got with you?”

  He knew me, but most adults tended to kid young’uns. I stepped into the elevator with them. “Howdy, Jules.”

  Grandpa’s big knuckle sharply cracked the back of my noggin. “That’s Mr. Jules to you.”

  With tears of embarrassment and shame in my eyes, I stared down at my Red Ball sneakers. Two reprimands in only a few minutes had me feeling sorry for myself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jules.” I swallowed a huge lump in my throat and stared at the ground.

  “Thass all right, Master Top.” He closed the metal gates. “Y’all going to see Mr. O.C. this afternoon?” He put his gnarled thumb on the fourth floor button.

  I focused on the long, yellowed nail on that thumb to keep from crying. Grandpa put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Yessir, we are, but we’d like to go to the top first, please.”

  Mister Jules was genuinely surprised, but when Grandpa nodded, he pushed the embossed button. The elevator groaned, jerked and squealed as we rose slowly, cables clanking overhead.

  Grandpa kept his hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “How’s Lily today, Jules?”

  He smiled and settled into their familiar conversation. “Fair to middlin’ I reckon today. ’Leventh wife Lily was cannin’ beans when I left this morning.”

  Grandpa chuckled. “You don’t call her eleventh wife Lily at home, do you?”

  I was sure Mr. Jules was around a hundred and four because he had outlived ten other wives. In my opinion, the frail old man should have been home sitting in front of the fire. Instead, he showed up every day for work as the Elevator Man at the Lamar County Courthouse.

  “Aw, nawsir, I don’t. She’d have a rigor if I did that. I call her ’leventh wife so’s y’all know who it is I’m talkin’ about.” Jules stopped the elevator, adjusted it level, opened the safety gate, and then the door to reveal a floor full of jail cells. “See y’all in a little bit.”

  “Sure enough.” Grandpa and I stepped off.

  “What are we doing?” I asked. “Is Mr. O.C. up here today?”

  One of the sheriff’s deputies rose from behind a wooden desk a few feet away. His hair was slicked back with the Vitalis that filled the air. The man was nearly as big as Mr. John Washington, the county’s only colored deputy, and his shoulders were wide as a Buick. I one time heard somebody say Mr. John was near big as a grizzly bear.

  “Howdy, Ned. This the one?”

  Grandpa put his hand back on my shoulder with a firm grip. “Sure is. Top, let’s follow this man. I want to show you something.”

  The serious deputy picked up a set of keys and led us past the desk, around a corner, and into a wide aisle running the length of the concrete floor between two long lines of open jail cells. A few sorry-looking m
en loafed in the cells, sitting and laying on the bunks. One was standing with his back to us, his hands around the bars set in one of the many outside windows that were the only ventilation for the prisoners.

  The deputy clacked his nightstick against the bars as we passed. “Don’t you be yelling out the winder there, Eugene. I’ll cuff you to your bed if you do.”

  “You can kiss my ass, Harvey.” The prisoner turned around. “Well, I’ll be damned, you arresting kids for playing hooky these days, Ned?”

  Before he could answer, Judge O.C. Rains came up behind us. “Howdy, boys.” He was breathing hard, so I figured he’d climbed up the stairs from his office on the fourth floor.

  I was in awe of the old judge who was always larger than life, like a movie star. His thick white hair and matching eyebrows reminded me of those judges in movies they showed late at night on Channel 12. He always wore dark suits and thin little ties, and of course, his Stetson.

  Knowing what Grandpa expected, I stuck out my hand and said hello. Judge O.C. gave me a solemn shake and turned his attention back to Grandpa. I didn’t listen to their conversation, because I was watching the prisoners who all suddenly became very interested in me.

  One was dressed in nothing more than rags. In the cell next to him was a black man with a huge mouse over one eye where someone caught him a solid lick.

  I didn’t have time to notice the other convicts, because a metallic clank echoed as Deputy Harvey unlocked an empty cell. When I turned my eyes back from the open door, Grandpa and Mr. O.C. waited there, staring down at me. Deputy Harvey stepped back with a stern face.

  Mr. O.C. frowned, his white eyebrows almost touching over the bridge of his nose. “Son, your Grandpa told me you’ve been acting up back home.”

  Stunned at the turn of events, I glanced from one old man to the other. “Uh, well…”

  Grandpa broke in. “I also heard you played hooky for a couple of hours with another young outlaw, and someone saw y’all smoking down at your Uncle James’ pool.”

  Even more shocked, my ears rang and my lungs refused to cooperate. “We…”

  “That right?” Mr. O.C. had me off balance. “Well, I’m sorry to see you’ve fallen in with a bad bunch, son. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Mr. O.C. leaned forward with his hands on his knees to get closer to my eye level. He was an expert in the courtroom and I was no match for the glaring old prosecutor’s questioning. “What else have you done and thought you got away with? Have you done anything else that could be wrong in the eyes of the law? That’s either a yes or no answer.”

  Questions came hard and fast and suddenly I couldn’t think quick enough. “Uh.” I peeked up at Grandpa for some relief, but he stared at me with those ice blue eyes, waiting on an answer. “Yessir.”

  Grandpa’s shoulders slumped. “That’s it, then.”

  Judge O.C. nodded and straightened to his full height. “Yes, it is. Texas Orrin Parker, a.k.a. Top, for your misdeeds at school, for smoking, cussin’, drinking, and being a general all around scalawag, I hereby sentence you to…” he checked the pocket watch from his vest, “…one hour in jail, commencing right now, to think about all the things you’ve done wrong. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  My mouth fell open as those words echoed through the cells like the voice of doom, sounding like the hanging judge I’d watched in a western the night before. Grandpa turned his back to me and my eyes felt hot with tears.

  “Wait a minute. Grandpa…?”

  The big deputy stepped up, squeezed my shoulder and firmly turned me toward the cell. He put my hands on the bars. “Stand right there and don’t move, prisoner. I have to frisk you.”

  I tried to turn and see Grandpa over my shoulder, but Deputy Harvey gripped the back of my neck with a much stronger hand and held me still. “I said don’t move!”

  Shocked, I hardly breathed. He patted under my arms, down my sides, and on down around my legs. Next, he tapped my back pockets and felt the puffer. He raised his eyebrows at Grandpa, and I guess he must have shook his head, because Deputy Harvey left it here.

  With two fingers he reached in my other back pocket and removed a couple of washers, the unopened prize from a box of Cracker Jack, a small compass from an entirely different box of Cracker Jack, a roll of fishing line wrapped around a piece of wood, and half a piece of Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

  He switched to my front pockets. The left one produced a couple of screws, an interesting rock, a piece of furry hard candy, and a dozen BBs. It was my other pocket that really got me in trouble. Besides my pocket knife that Uncle Cody had given me, he found Pepper’s now broken cigarette and a wooden match I’d absently stuck in there only a couple of hours before.

  My eyes widened and I felt as if the floor moved under my feet. “That’s not mine.”

  The deputy handed the contraband to Judge O.C. “That’s what they all say, prisoner.” He pushed me into an empty cell. “Sit right down on that bunk right there and don’t you move until you’re released. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, neither.”

  Numbly, I stumbled across the cell as if going to the gallows. When I turned to sit on the edge of the hard bunk, the deputy slammed the door with a clang and turned the lock. I saw Judge O.C. hand the cigarette to Grandpa. He had an expression that about broke my heart, and the three of them left without another word.

  I was alone in jail.

  For the first time I noticed the scruffy men at the bars had moved closer, watching me from the adjoining cells. I’d always heard about your blood running cold, and now I knew what that meant.

  “Hidy, boy.” One of the prisoners scratched the stubble on his cheek. He had a crooked grin and teeth to match. I wanted to run to the door and scream for help, but I knew Grandpa and Mr. O.C. were men of their word. I’d be there for the entire hour. “I wish they’d-a put you in my cell. I’d like the company.”

  The wristwatch they’d left on my arm said I’d been there for only one minute.

  The prisoner on the other side hung his hands through bars and rested his elbows on the cross brace. He had a wicked scar under his left eye. I was sure it came from a knife fight in one of the honky-tonks across the river in Oklahoma and his blood had run free and soaked the sawdust floor Grandpa once told me about. “You’re pretty young to be an outlaw, but that’s all right. I got my start when I was about your age. They didn’t catch me till quite a bit later, though. It was my drinkin’ that tripped me up. They caught me drunk down in the cane breaks and liked to have beat me to death in a ditch before they put me under arrest.”

  His mention of drinking brought Mr. O.C.’s words back to me. I wondered if the judge found out that me and Pepper had been sneaking into the evidence jars stored in the smokehouse to take little bitty sips of the clear white lightning on the top shelf. Grandpa always kept a small quart jar full of confiscated whiskey as a memento for each still he broke up down in the bottoms.

  Crooked Teeth reached way into the cell, as far as his arm could reach. “I like the material on that shirt, boy. Scooch over here so I can feel it for a minute, would you?”

  Horrified, I stared straight ahead at the cell door and didn’t stir.

  “Naw, don’t listen to him, son.” Scar hawked up a thick wad of green snot and spat. “You slide over thisaway and let me rub that fresh boys-regular haircut.” He stuck his arm through the bars and wiggled his fingers at me. “I love the way that short hair feels under my hand.”

  I tried not to cry, I’d been through worse last year and I was hoping Grandpa would hurry up and come back soon to get me out. I sat dead in the middle of the bunk, barely beyond the two inmates’ reach.

  “I heard what you’re in fer,” Crooked Teeth said. “I wish I’d’a stayed in school and studied harder. I wouldn’t be locked up here today if I had.”

  Scar shook the solid bars, but they didn’t budge. He jumped up, put his feet on the lowest crosspiece and hung there like a monkey. “I played hoo
ky all the time and that led to smoking, drinking, and card playing, and the next thing I knew I was in the pen. I got out, but didn’t have no education so I couldn’t get a job, and wound up back here again.”

  Crooked Teeth shuffled his feet. “I only have three more weeks on my sentence, and when I get out I have a job picking cotton. You can come when you get out and pull bolls with me if you want.”

  Scar wasn’t interested, and I knew why. Picking cotton was one of the hottest, hardest jobs I knew of. A lifetime of working in the fields was a depressing thought. “Naw, I’ll see what happens when I get out after Christmas. Hey boy, I saw that toonie they got out of your pocket. You wouldn’t happen to have another smoke stuck away would you? I’d dearly love one right now. You can use them for money in here, too.”

  I didn’t answer, because I started wheezing, feeling miserable, and scared. It was a good thing Miss Becky had given me the puffer before we came in, or I’d have been in serious trouble. I tugged it loose from my back pocket, squeezed another dose into my lungs, and continued to stare straight ahead.

  The prisoners gave up reaching for me. Concentrating on my breathing, I managed to tune out their conversation and counted the seconds, then minutes. Someone came down the aisle and stopped in front of my cell. I glanced up to see Deputy John Washington standing there under his hat.

  Folks called him Big John, because he was near seven feet tall and built like a mountain. He was the first official Negro deputy in the county and most of all, he was Grandpa’s good friend. Tears welled and I wanted to sob when he shook his great head. “I swanny. What’s this world coming to? I never thought I’d see you in here.”

  I’d lost my last friend. He was our rescuer, the self-appointed protector of all Parkers, and I felt I’d let him down. “Mr. John?”