Freeman wrestled with the fury rising in him. “Shut up, Dupree. You don’t like Delano yourself. So what’s it to you?”
“I just don’t believe it,” Dupree mumbled.
7
“WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY: You can lead a mule to water, but you can’t make him drink none.”
“Mules ain’t hims or hers, R. J. Mules are its.”
“Well, that’s what they say.”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah. The tiger don’t change spots.”
“Leopard, Otis. Tigers has got stripes.”
“Yeah…”
“You can’t teach a old dog new tricks.”
“Yeah…”
“You’d think somethin’ would’ve changed.”
“Not, though.”
“It’s easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle than—than, uh, somethin’.”
“That don’t make sense, Freeman.”
“I forget how it goes. Old Preacher Bytheway’s always sayin’ it.”
“Who?”
“Preacher Bartholomew Bytheway.”
“That’s the craziest name I ever heard.”
“Preaches a tent meeting. Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle. He’s crazy as his name. You oughta hear that fool.”
“It’s easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“Yeah, Wesley, that’s it. You got it. What’s the matter with that Highway 17 bunch, anyways?”
“Nobody takes easy to change, Freeman.”
*
It was Sunday. Freeman and R. J. and Jack and Otis and Paul had appeared out of Black Pool Swamp after lunch and asked Wesley and me if we wanted to hit softball. We had played, but without enthusiasm, and finally we quit and stretched out on a quilt of pine needles and rested. The Highway 17 Gang was on everyone’s mind. They had become vicious in their determination to put us in our place after our bold assertion of equality. It was a response none of us had expected, and it was annoying.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Paul boasted, “I’m ready to do it all over again. Maybe it’ll take another lickin’.”
“Aw, Paul, that’s crazy,” Wesley replied. “We had our say, and it got to ’em. They’re the ones who’re aggravated.”
“Well, I tell you somethin’ else—it’s them that’s got to change, not us,” argued Paul.
“That’s right,” I added.
“Another thing, we catch anybody from us makin’ up to them, we got to beat somebody’s tail.” Paul was ranting.
“That’s the truth,” Freeman said. “And, Wesley, you may be thinkin’ we ought to be forgiving and all that, but that’s not gonna happen. What goes for us, goes for you, too.”
Wesley didn’t move. He looked asleep. “Freeman, I’m not arguin’ that,” he said defensively.
“Well, let’s vow.”
“Don’t need to,” Wesley replied. “We know what we got to do.”
“Wes,” R. J. warned, “we ought to vow.”
Wesley turned on his side, picked up a pine needle and began to braid it. That was always a signal he was thinking.
“I’ll tell you what,” Wesley finally said. “Let’s have a hearing if anybody gets to bein’ buddy-buddy with them. Some of the little kids just don’t know what they doin’.”
“All right,” R. J. quickly agreed. “Suits me.” R. J. liked the idea of a kangaroo court. That made it dramatic.
“Everybody agree?” asked R. J.
Everyone nodded.
“No playing around with them,” I emphasized. “No—uh…”
“What’s the matter, Colin?” Freeman asked.
“Uh—nothin’. Nothin’. I’m agreeing, that’s all.”
Megan. That meant I would have to summon all my cunning, employ every instinct I had, not be caught with Megan. These were my friends and Wesley was my brother. But Megan—Megan belonged to another me. She gave me Three Musketeers candy bars and I drew her pictures of dogs.
“You wait,” Wesley said slowly. “You wait. Something’s gonna break for us.”
*
At the exact moment we were sealing our strategy in the High Council session of a Sunday afternoon, Alvin Bond was discovering The Secret. We did not know it, but Alvin Bond and The
Secret would be Wesley’s “something” that broke for us. It would happen the following day, on Monday, and it would work because Alvin would become the most unlikely hero in the history of Emery Junior High School.
Alvin Bond was an Our Sider, geographically and by heritage, but he never quite belonged to the inner circle of rule and example. Alvin was like a leftover thought in a conversation, something you meant to say but didn’t and when you remembered it, the conversation was over. It was partly because he lived on the Harrison side of Highway 17 and the rest of us lived on the Goldmine side. And it was partly because he was sixteen years old and only a ninth grader. Alvin had failed the fourth, the sixth, and the eighth grades—not because he was dumb, but because his teachers did not understand his nature.
Alvin was shy, shy in a thin, emaciated way that described him emotionally as well as physically. He was at least five feet, ten inches tall and his arms were three inches longer than those of anyone in Emery. He weighed, probably, one hundred and twenty pounds, and the way he stood, shoulders pointed, hands folded in front, he looked like a praying mantis. During all his years at Emery, Alvin had stayed to himself. If he had any friends, none of us knew it, though everyone from Our Side had a kind feeling for him. Alvin was all right, as far as we knew.
We had even become accustomed to watching Alvin walk backward. Alvin walked backward all the time. Even when we lined up to march into the auditorium for Friday assembly, Alvin walked backward. And he never spoke. Never. There was a story that he had once talked during an arithmetic lesson in the seventh grade, asking Old Lady Blackwall if he could go use the toilet. But that
flood of rhetoric was followed by a two-year silence. Some of the Highway 17 Gang would occasionally kid Alvin about the cat’s having his tongue and Alvin would stare them down with a contemptuous, never-blinking gaze. I once heard Dupree whisper, “That boy’s the champion stare-downer of all
time
.”
Staring people down used to be a test of character in Emery.
*
It was recess on Monday, and we were working out for a softball game against Airline. It was a day of high-pitched chatter, the ripe swat of a Louisville Slugger against a bruised Spalding practice ball, the “Attay, babe! Attay, babe!” compliments for a perfectly fielded grounder, and the grand posing of swinging three bats in the on-deck circle. We were not a great softball team, but when we worked out we looked able enough.
And during this workout, Alvin slipped up to Freeman in a kind of backward shuffle and said, “I can throw a curve.”
Freeman almost fainted. The workout chatter died to a funeral quiet. Alvin Bond had spoken. After two years, from needing to use the toilet in the seventh grade to a workout for a softball game with Airline, Alvin Bond had finally spoken.
“What’d you say, Alvin?” asked Freeman.
“Uh—I—I can, well, throw a curve.”
“With a softball?”
“Uh—er—uh-huh.” Alvin cleared his throat. He had overworked his voice. “Uh—with anything.”
“Good Lord, he talks,” Dupree exclaimed. “What did you say, boy?”
Freeman whirled toward Dupree. “Shuttup,” he snapped.
Alvin twisted his head, exercising the vocal cords in his neck. He was embarrassed. “I can throw a curve, that’s all,” he said timidly.
“If you can throw one, I want to see it,” Freeman said, handing Alvin the ball.
Alvin held the ball in both hands, tucked his head and tried to drag a sound out of his throat.
“Go on, Alvin, ol’ boy, you can do it,” coaxed Freeman.
The team gathered around Freeman, who squatted behind home plate.
“Go on, Alvin.”
“Yeah, boy, c’mon.”
“Attay, babe, Alvin.”
“C’mon, boy. You can do it.”
The encouragement was coming from everyone, including members of the Highway 17 Gang. Dupree scowled, but he knew to keep quiet.
Alvin inched his way toward the pitching mound, twitching and trying to hide behind himself. At the mound, he hesitated and took five long steps backward, toward second base.
“Whatcha doin’, Alvin?” yelled Freeman.
Alvin tried to explain with his hands, but he looked like a spastic in a semaphore contest. “Too close,” he finally called.
“You gonna throw from out there?”
Alvin nodded, his head bobbing awkwardly on the hinge of a foot-long neck. “Where you supposed to be, throwin’ baseball-like,” he answered.
Dupree laughed. “You some kind of expert on baseball?” he said.
“Shuttup, Dupree.” It was Sonny, Dupree’s buddy.
But Alvin had heard Dupree’s sass. He dropped his head for a long moment and plowed at the ground with the toe of his shoe.
“You gonna plant cotton out there, boy?” razzed Dupree.
“Shuttup, Dupree,” Sonny repeated.
“C’mon, Alvin. Anytime you ready, let rip,” Freeman called.
Alvin fidgeted with his fingers on the softball, turned his back to Freeman and went into his windup, a grotesquely funny contortion of arms and legs. He whipped suddenly around and the ball hummed like a faraway airplane. Three feet from a direct path to Freeman’s glove, it snapped left and Freeman missed catching it by two feet. The ball hit the ground, skipped once and struck Dupree in his stomach and Dupree collapsed.
“I’ll be,” Freeman muttered in disbelief. “He did it.”
Alvin had actually thrown a curve. None of us had ever before seen a curve, and Alvin, backward-walking, never-talking Alvin, had thrown a curve that deserved to be bronzed and kept forever.
We were humbled by what we had seen. Dupree wallowed in the dirt, gasping for air, but no one moved to help him, not even Sonny.
“I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Freeman, leading us to Alvin. “Hey, Alvin. How’d you do it?”
We were in a circle around Alvin. He pulled at his pants, kicked at a clod of dirt, and looked away toward the railroad track. Finally, he said, “The Secret. My daddy taught me The Secret.”
“What’s The Secret, Alvin?” asked Freeman eagerly.
“Uh—it’s a—uh—secret.”
“Well, yeah.” Freeman laughed. “I reckon it would be. When’d you learn it, Alvin?”
Alvin looked at Freeman, then looked away. “Yesterday.”
“Can you throw a curve underhanded, Alvin?” asked Wesley.
“Uh—I guess.”
“Sure would be good if you could pitch softball for us,” Wesley suggested.
Freeman agreed. “That’s the truth. What’d y’all think, boys?”
“Attay, babe, Alvin.”
“Attay, babe, boy.”
Alvin smiled and blushed. I had never seen Alvin smile. He even had skinny teeth.
It was symbolic, in a pleasing way, that Dupree had been cut down by Alvin Bond’s curve. Alvin captured the fancy of every boy in school and his new leadership on the mound inspired a unity between Our Side and the Highway 17 Gang. It was a cautious, guarded unity and it did not spill over into our social behavior, but it was real enough when we performed battle with Airline and Goldmine and Harrison and the other junior high schools in our area. Alvin could throw a rising underhand curve, and he had amazing speed and control. As an added attraction, Alvin was persuaded to offer a demonstration of his ability with a baseball after each at-home softball game. He was so unbelievable with a baseball he became a community celebrity within two weeks and farmers would actually quit plowing to watch him pitch. William Pruitte, who had lost a leg in World War II and returned to Emery to become the only wooden-legged umpire of organized baseball in America, was so impressed by Alvin he began to make plans for Alvin to pitch for the Harrison Hornets, a Sunday afternoon team of men who were part of a five-county amateur league. William said Alvin was the greatest baseball pitcher he had ever seen in Georgia, and Alvin had never pitched a game.
“Don’t matter,” William declared. “You’ll see.”
Alvin’s wondrous talent gave Our Side a hero, and an improved image. We quickly included him in every new ground decision.
We encouraged him to talk, applauded his concentration in learning to walk sideways, and we never stopped talking about The Secret. To us, The Secret was as perplexing as the formula for Coca-Cola. And that is the way Alvin liked it. Nothing could pry The Secret from Alvin, not even a crowbar.
“No need to guess,” Alvin advised us. “You could look at me throw a million times and you’d never see it.”
Alvin was rapidly nudging his way into adulthood, yet he still honored Wesley’s leadership. Alvin had been in the fight, swatting anyone who stumbled in his direction, and he had heard Wesley’s challenge of Dewitt Hollister and the entire Highway 17 Gang, and he knew he would never do anything to match that courage. Besides, Alvin thought of the REA as a miracle and Wesley was someone who could peer in the haze of Time Unknown and describe sensations of things to come that made our nerves freeze with anticipation. Alvin used to say, again and again, “My mama’s gonna love it when the REA comes.”